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in  2019  with  funding  from 
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https://archive.org/details/essaysOOelio 


Portrait  of  Heine 

Original  Etching  by  William  Unger 


Illustrated  Sterling  Gdition 


\ 


ESSAYS 


BY 

GEORGE  ELIOT 


BOSTON 

DANA  ESTES  &  COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS 


PREFACE. 


ISHES  have  often  been  expressed  that  the  articles 


V  V  known  to  have  been  written  by  George  Eliot  in  the 
Westminster  Review  before  she  had  become  famous  under  that 
pseudonyme,  should  be  republished.  Those  wishes  are  now 
gratified  —  as  far,  at  any  rate,  as  it  is  possible  to  gratify 
them.  For  it  was  not  George  Eliot’s  desire  that  the  whole 
of  those  articles  should  be  rescued  from  oblivion.  And  in 
order  that  there  might  be  no  doubt  on  the  subject,  she 
made,  some  time  before  her  death,  a  collection  of  such  of 
her  fugitive  writings  as  she  considered  deserving  of  a  per¬ 
manent  form,  carefully  revised  them  for  the  press,  and  left 
them  in  the  order  in  which  they  here  appear,  with  written 
injunctions  that  no  other  pieces  written  by  her,  of  date 
prior  to  1857,  should  be  republished. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  present  collection  of  Essays 
has  the  weight  of  her  sanction,  and  has  had,  moreover,  the 
advantage  of  such  corrections  and  alterations  as  a  revision 
long  subsequent  to  the  period  of  writing  may  have  sug¬ 
gested  to  her. 

The  opportunity  afforded  by  this  republication  seemed  a 
suitable  one  for  giving  to  the  world  some  “  notes,’  as  George 
Eliot  simply  called  them,  which  belong  to  a  much  later 
period,  and  which  have  not  been  previously  published. 
The  exact  date  of  their  writing  cannot  be  fixed  with  any 
certainty,  but  it  must  have  been  some  time  between  the 


ii 


PREFACE. 


appearance  of  “  Middlemarch  ”  and  that  of  “  Theophrastus 
Such.”  They  were  probably  written  without  any  distinct 
view  to  publication,  —  some  of  them  for  the  satisfaction  of 
her  own  mind ;  others  perhaps  as  memoranda,  and  with  an 
idea  of  working  them  out  more  fully  at  some  later  time. 
It  may  be  of  interest  to  know  that,  besides  the  “  notes  ” 
here  given,  the  note-book  contains  four  which  appeared  in 
“Theophrastus  Such,”  three  of  them  practically  as  they 
there  stand ;  and  it  is  not  impossible  that  some  of  those  in 
the  present  volume  might  also  have  been  so  utilized  had 
they  not  happened  to  fall  outside  the  general  scope  of  the 
work.  The  marginal  titles  are  George  Eliot’s  own,  but 
for  the  general  title,  “Leaves  from  a  Note-book/’  I  am 
responsible. 

I  need  only  add  that,  in  publishing  these  notes,  I  have 
the  complete  concurrence  of  my  friend,  Mr.  Cross. 

Charles  Lee  Lewes. 

Hiohoatx,  December ,  1883. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


ESSAYS. 

Pag* 

WoRLDLINESS  AND  OtHER-WoRLDLINESS  :  THE  POET  YOUNG  .  .  9 

(Westminster  Review,  1857.) 

German  Wit  :  Heinrich  Heine . 63 

(Westminster  Review,  1856.) 

Evangelical  Teaching  :  Dr.  Cumming . 105 

(Westminster  Review,  1855.) 

The  Influence  of  Rationalism:  Lecky’s  History  ....  139 
(Fortnightly  Review,  1865.) 

The  Natural  History  of  German  Life  :  Riehl . 157 

(Westminster  Review,  1856.) 

Three  Months  in  Weimar . 194 

(Fraser’s  Magazine,  1855.) 

Address  to  Working  Men,  by  Felix  Holt . 214 

(Blackwood’s  Magazine,  1868.) 


LEAVES  FROM  A  NOTE-BOOK. 

Authorship . 233 

Judgments  on  Authors . 23& 

Story-Telling . 240 

Historic  Imagination . 243 

Value  in  Orioinality . 245 

To  the  Prosaic  all  Things  are  Prosaic . 245 


TABLE  OE  CONTENTS. 

Page 


“  Dear  Religious  Love  ” . 245 

We  make  our  own  Precedents . 246 

Birth  or  Tolerance . 246 

Felix  qui  non  potuit  .  . . 247 

Divine  Grace  a  Real  Emanation . 247 

“A  Fine  Excess.”  Feeling  is  Energy . 248 


IMPRESSIONS  OE  THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH. 

Looking  Inward . 253 

Looking  Backward . 265 

How  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH . 279 

A  Man  surprised  at  his  Originality . 293 

A  too  Deferential  Man . 301 

Only  Temper . 309 

A  Political  Molecule . 316 

The  Watch-Dog  of  Knowledge . 320 

A  Half-Breed . 327 

Debasing  the  Moral  Currency . 334 

The  Wasp  credited  with  the  Honey-Comb . 341 

“  So  Young  !  ” . 353 

How  we  come  to  give  ourselves  False  Testimonials,  and 

BELIEVE  IN  THEM . 359 

The  too  Ready  Writer . 368 

Diseases  of  Small  Authorship . 377 

Moral  Swindlers . 386 

Shadows  of  the  Coming  Race  . . 395 

The  Modern  He?  !  Hep  !  Hep  ! . 401 


The  Lifted  Veil . 427 

Brother  Jacob  .  ,  ,  ,  . . 475 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS, 


Page 

Heine . Frontispiece 

George  Eliot . 16 

Portrait  of  Heine . 63 

Goethe  . 196 


ESSAYS  OP  GEORGE  ELIOT 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS : 
THE  POET  YOUNG. 


THE  study  of  men,  as  they  have  appeared  in  different 
ages  and  under  various  social  conditions,  may  be  con¬ 
sidered  as  the  natural  history  of  the  race.  Let  us,  then,  for 
a  moment  imagine  ourselves  as  students  of  this  natural  his¬ 
tory,  dredging  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
search  of  specimens.  About  the  year  1730  we  have  hauled 
up  a  remarkable  individual  of  the  species  divine  —  a  surpris¬ 
ing  name,  considering  the  nature  of  the  animal  before  us,  but 
we  are  used  to  unsuitable  names  in  natural  history.  Let  us 
examine  this  individual  at  our  leisure.  He  is  on  the  verge 
of  fifty,  and  has  recently  undergone  his  metamorphosis  into 
the  clerical  form.  Rather  a  parodoxical  specimen,  if  you  ob¬ 
serve  him  narrowly :  a  sort  of  cross  between  a  sycophant  and 
a  psalmist ;  a  poet  whose  imagination  is  alternately  fired  by 
the  Last  Day  and  by  a  creation  of  peers,  who  fluctuates 
between  rhapsodic  applause  of  King  George  and  rhapsodic 
applause  of  Jehovah.  After  spending  “  a  foolish  youth,  the 
sport  of  peers  and  poets,”  after  being  a  hanger-on  of  the  pro¬ 
fligate  Duke  of  Wharton,  after  aiming  in  vain  at  a  parliamen¬ 
tary  career,  and  angling  for  pensions  and  preferment  with 
fulsome  dedications  and  fustian  odes,  he  is  a  little  disgusted 
with  his  imperfect  success,  and  has  determined  to  retire  from 
the  general  mendicancy  business  to  a  particular  branch  ;  in 
other  words,  he  has  determined  on  that  renunciation  of  the 
world  implied  in  “  taking  orders,”  with  the  prospect  of  a 
good  living  and  an  advantageous  matrimonial  connection. 
And  no  man  can  be  better  fitted  for  an  Established  Church. 


10 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


He  personifies  completely  her  nice  balance  of  temporalities 
and  spiritualities.  He  is  equally  impressed  with  the  momen- 
tousness  of  death  and  of  burial  fees  ;  he  languishes  at  once 
for  immortal  life  and  for  “  livings  ;”  he  has  a  fervid  attach¬ 
ment  to  patrons  in  general,  but  on  the  whole  lorefers  the 
Almighty.  He  will  teach,  with  something  more  than  official 
conviction,  the  nothingness  of  earthly  things  ;  and  he  will 
feel  something  more  than  private  disgust  if  his  meritorious 
efforts  in  directing  men’s  attention  to  another  world  are  not 
rewarded  by  substantial  preferment  in  this.  His  secular 
man  believes  in  cambric  bands  and  silk  stockings  as  charac¬ 
teristic  attire  for  “  an  ornament  of  religion  and  virtue,” 
hopes  courtiers  will  never  forget  to  copy  Sir  Robert  Wal¬ 
pole,  and  writes  begging-letters  to  the  King’s  mistress.  His 
spiritual  man  recognizes  no  motives  more  familiar  than  Gol¬ 
gotha  and  “  the  skies ;  ”  it  walks  in  graveyards,  or  it  soars 
among  the  stars.  His  religion  exhausts  itself  in  ejaculations 
and  rebukes,  and  knows  no  medium  between  the  ecstatic  and 
the  sententious.  If  it  were  not  for  the  prospect  of  immortal¬ 
ity,  he  considers,  it  would  be  wise  and  agreeable  to  be  inde¬ 
cent,  or  to  murder  one’s  father ;  and,  heaven  apart,  it  would 
be  extremely  irrational  in  any  man  not  to  be  a  knave.  Man, 
he  thinks,  is  a  compound  of  the  angel  and  the  brute  :  the 
brute  is  to  be  humbled  by  being  reminded  of  its  “  relation  to 
the  stalls,”  and  frightened  into  moderation  by  the  contempla¬ 
tion  of  death-beds  and  skulls ;  the  angel  is  to  be  developed 
by  vituperating  this  world  and  exalting  the  next ;  and  by 
this  double  process  you  get  the  Christian,  “tii3  highest 
style  of  man.”  With  all  this,  our  new-made  divine  is  an  un¬ 
mistakable  poet.  To  a  clay,  compounded  chiefly  of  the 
worldling  and  the  rhetorician,  there  is  added  a  real  spark  of 
Promethean  fire.  He  will  one  day  clothe  his  apostrophes  and 
objurgations,  his  astronomical  religion  and  his  charnel-house 
morality,  in  lasting  verse,  which  will  stand,  like  a  Juggernaut 
made  of  gold  and  jewels,  at  once  magnificent  and  repulsive  j 
for  this  divine  is  Edward  Yroung,  the  future  author  of  the 
“Night  Thoughts.” 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- W ORLDLINESS.  11 

It  would  be  extremely  ill-bred  in  us*  to  suppose  that  our 
readers  are  not  acquainted  with  the  facts  of  Young’s  life  $ 
they  are  amongst  the  things  that  “  every  one  knows  ;  ”  but  we 
have  observed  that,  with  regard  to  these  universally  known 
matters,  the  majority  of  readers  like  to  be  treated  after  the 
plan  suggested  by  Monsieur  Jourdain.  When  that  distin¬ 
guished  bourgeois  was  asked  if  he  knew  Latin,  he  replied, 
“Oui,  mais  faites  comme  si  je  ne  le  savais  pas.”  Assum¬ 
ing,  then,  as  a  polite  writer  should,  that  our  readers  know 
everything  about  Young,  it  will  be  a  direct  sequitur  from 
that  assumption  that  we  should  proceed  as  if  they  knew 
nothing,  and  recall  the  incidents  of  his  biography  with 
as  much  particularity  as  we  may,  without  trenching  on  the 
space  we  shall  need  for  our  main  purpose  —  the  reconsidera¬ 
tion  of  his  character  as  a  moral  and  religious  poet. 

Judging  from  Young’s  works,  one  might  imagine  that  the 
preacher  had  been  organized  in  him  by  hereditary  transmis¬ 
sion  through  a  long  line  of  clerical  forefathers,  that  the’ 
diamonds  of  the  “Night  Thoughts”  had  been  slowly  con¬ 
densed  from  the  charcoal  of  ancestral  sermons.  Yet  it  was 
not  so.  His  grandfather,  apparently,  wrote  himself  gentle¬ 
man,  not  clerk  y  and  there  is  no  evidence  that  preaching  had 
run  in  the  family  blood  before  it  took  that  turn  in  the  per¬ 
son  of  the  poet’s  father,  who  was  quadruply  clerical,  being 
at  once  rector,  prebendary,  Court  chaplain,  and  dean.  Young 
was  born  at  his  father’s  rectory  of  Upham,  in  1681.  We  may 
confidently  assume  that  even  the  author  of  the  “Night 
Thoughts  ”  came  into  the  world  without  a  wig ;  but,  apart 
from  Dr.  Doran’s  authority,  we  should  not  have  ventured  to 
state  that  the  excellent  rector  “kissed,  with  dignified  emo 
tion,  his  only  son  and  intended  namesake.”  Dr.  Doran 
doubtless  knows  this,  from  his  intimate  acquaintance  with 
clerical  physiology  and  psychology.  He  has  ascertained  that 
the  paternal  emotions  of  prebendaries  have  a  sacerdotal 
quality,  and  that  the  very  chyme  and  chyle  of  a  rector  are 
conscious  of  the  gown  and  band. 

In  due  time  the  boy  went  to  Winchester  College,  and  sub- 


12 


ESSAYS  OF  GEOKGE  ELIOT. 


sequently,  though  not  till  he  was  twenty-two,  to  Oxford, 
where,  for  his  fathers  sake,  he  was  befriended  by  the  war¬ 
dens  of  two  colleges,  and  in  1708,  three  years  after  his 
father’s  death,  nominated  by  Archbishop  Tenison  to  a  law- 
fellowship  at  All  Souls.  Of  Young’s  life  at  Oxford  in  these 
years,  hardly  anything  is  known.  His  biographer,  Croft,  has 
nothing  to  tell  us  but  the  vague  report  that,  when  “  Young 
found  himself  independent  and  his  own  master  at  All  Souls, 
he  was  not  the  ornament  to  religion  and  morality  that  he  after¬ 
wards  became,”  and  the  perhaps  apocryphal  anecdote,  that 
Tindal,  the  atheist,  confessed  himself  embarrassed  by  the 
originality  of  Young’s  arguments.  Both  the  report  and  the 
anecdote,  however,  are  borne  out  by  indirect  evidence.  As 
to  the  latter,  Young  has  left  us  sufficient  proof  that  he  was 
fond  of  arguing  on  the  theological  side,  and  that  he  had  his 
own  way  of  treating  old  subjects.  As  to  the  former,  we 
learn  that  Pope,  after  saying  other  things  which  we  know  to 
be  true  of  Young,  added,  that  he  passed  “a  foolish  youth, 
the  sport  of  peers  and  poets  ;  ”  and,  from  all  the  indications 
we  possess  of  his  career  till  he  was  nearly  fifty,  we  are  in¬ 
clined  to  think  that  Pope’s  statement  only  errs  by  defect,  and 
that  he  should  rather  have  said,  “a  foolish  youth  and  middle 
age.”  It  is  not  likely  that  Young  was  a  very  hard  student,  for 
he  impressed  Johnson,  who  saw  him  in  his, old  age,  as  “not  a 
great  scholar,”  and  as  surprisingly  ignorant  of  what  Johnson 
thought  “  quite  common  maxims  ”  in  literature  ;  and  there 
is  no  evidence  that  he  filled  either  his  leisure  or  his  purse  by 
taking  pupils.  His  career  as  an  author  did  not  commence 
till  he  was  nearly  thirty,  even  dating  from  the  publication  of 
a  portion  of  the  “  Last  Day,”  in  the  “  Tatler ;  ”  so  that  he 
could  hardly  have  been  absorbed  in  composition.  But  where 
the  fully  developed  insect  is  parasitic,  we  believe  the  larva  is 
usually  parasitic  also,  and  we  shall  probably  not  be  far  wrong 
in  supposing  that  Young  at  Oxford,  as  elsewhere,  spent  a 
good  deal  of  his  time  in  hanging  about  possible  and  actual 
patrons,  and  accommodating  himself  to  their  habits  with  con¬ 
siderable  flexibility  of  conscience  and  of  tongue  ;  being  none 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  13 


the  less  ready,  upon  occasion,  to  present  himself  as  the  cham¬ 
pion  of  theology,  and  to  rhapsodize  at  convenient  moments 
in  the  company  of  the  skies  or  of  skulls.  That  brilliant  profli¬ 
gate,  the  Duke  of  Wharton,  to  whom  Young  afterwards  clung 
as  his  chief  patron,  was  at  this  time  a  mere  boy ;  and,  though 
it  is  probable  that  their  intimacy  had  commenced,  since  the 
Duke’s  father  and  mother  were  friends  of  the  old  Dean,  that 
intimacy  ought  not  to  aggravate  any  unfavorable  inference  as 
to  Young’s  Oxford  life.  It  is  less  likely  that  he  fell  into  any 
exceptional  vice,  than  that  he  differed  from  the  men  around 
him  chiefly  in  his  episodes  of  theological  advocacy  and  rhap¬ 
sodic  solemnity.  He  probably  sowed  his  wild  oats  after  the 
coarse  fashion  of  his  times,  for  he  has  left  us  sufficient  evi¬ 
dence  that  his  moral  sense  was  not  delicate  ;  but  his  compan¬ 
ions,  who  were  occupied  in  sowing  their  own  oats,  perhaps 
took  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that  he  should  be  a  rake,  and 
were  only  struck  with  the  exceptional  circumstance  that  he 
was  a  pious  and  moralizing  rake. 

There  is  some  irony  in  the  fact  that  the  two  first  poetical 
productions  of  Young,  published  in  the  same  year,  were  his 
“  Epistle  to  Lord  Lansdowne,”  celebrating  the  recent  creation 
of  peers,  —  Lord  Lansdowne’s  creation  in  particular,  — and  the 
“  Last  Day.”  Other  poets,  besides  Young,  found  the  device 
for  obtaining  a  Tory  majority — by  turning  twelve  insignificant 
commoners  into  insignificant  lords  —  an  irresistible  stimulus 
to  verse ;  but  no  other  poet  showed  so  versatile  an  enthu¬ 
siasm,  so  nearly  equal  an  ardor  for  the  honor  of  the  new 
baron  and  the  honor  of  the  Deity.  But  the  twofold  nature 
of  the  sycophant  and  the  psalmist  is  not  more  strikingly 
shown  in  the  contrasted  themes  of  the  two  poems,  than  in 
the  transitions  from  bombast  about  monarchs  to  bombast 
about  the  resurrection,  in  the  “  Last  Day  ”  itself.  The  dedi¬ 
cation  of  the  poem  to  Queen  Anne,  Young  afterwards  sup¬ 
pressed,  for  he  was  always  ashamed  of  having  flattered  a 
dead  patron.  In  this  dedication,  Croft  tells  us,  “  he  gives 
her  Majesty  praise  indeed  for  her  victories,  but  says  that  the 
author  is  more  pleased  to  see  her  rise  from  this  lower  world, 


14 


ESSAYS  OF  GEOKGE  ELIOT. 


soaring  above  the  clouds,  passing  the  first  and  second  heavens, 
and  leaving  the  fixed  stars  behind  her  ;  nor  will  he  lose  her 
there,  he  says,  but  keep  her  still  in  view  through  the  bound¬ 
less  spaces  on  the  other  side  of  creation,  in  her  journey 
towards  eternal  bliss,  till  he  behold  the  heaven  of  heavens 
open,  and  angels  receiving  and  conveying  her  still  onward 
from  the  stretch  of  his  imagination,  which  tires  in  her  pur¬ 
suit,  and  falls  back  again  to  earth.” 

The  self-criticism  which  prompted  the  suppression  of  the 
dedication,  did  not,  however,  lead  him  to  improve  either  the 
rhyme  or  the  reason  of  the  unfortunate  couplet  — 

“  When  other  Bourbons  reign  in  other  lands, 

And,  if  men’s  sins  forbid  not,  other  Annes.” 

In  the  “Epistle  to  Lord  Lansdowne,”  Young  indicates  his 
taste  for  the  drama ;  and  there  is  evidence  that  his  tragedy 
of  “  Busixis  ”  was  “  in  the  theatre  ”  as  early  as  this  very  year, 
1713,  though  it  was  not  brought  on  the  stage  till  nearly  six 
years  later;  so  that  Young  was  now  very  decidedly  bent  on 
authorship,  for  which  his  degree  of  B.  C.  L.,  taken  in  this 
year,  was  doubtless  a  magical  equipment.  Another  poem, 
“  The  Force  of  Religion ;  or,  Vanquished  Love,”  founded  on 
the  execution  of  Lady  Jane  Grey  and  her  husband,  quickly 
followed,  showing  fertility  in  feeble  and  tasteless  verse  ;  and 
on  the  Queen’s  death,  in  1714,  Young  lost  no  time  in  making 
a  poetical  lament  for  a  departed  patron  a  vehicle  for  ex¬ 
travagant  laudation  of  the  new  monarch.  No  further  literary 
production  of  his  appeared  until  1716,  when  a  Latin  oration, 
which  he  delivered  on  the  foundation  of  the  Codrington 
Library  at  All  Souls,  gave  him  a  new  opportunity  for  dis¬ 
playing  his  alacrity  in  inflated  panegyric. 

In  1717  it  is  probable  that  Young  accompanied  the  Duke 
of  Wharton  to  Ireland,  though  so  slender  are  the  materials 
for  his  biography,  that  the  chief  basis  for  this  supposition  is 
a  passage  in  his  “Conjectures  on  Original  Composition,” 
written  when  he  was  nearly  eighty,  in  which  he  intimates 
that  he  had  once  been  in  that  country.  But  there  are  many 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  15 


facts  surviving  to  indicate  that  for  the  next  eight  or  nine 
years,  Young  was  a  sort  of  attache  of  Wharton’s.  In  1719, 
according  to  legal  records,  the  Duke  granted  him  an  annuity, 
in  consideration  of  his  having  relinquished  the  office  of  tutor 
to  Lord  Burleigh,  with  a  life  annuity  of  £100  a  year,  on  his 
Grace’s  assurances  that  he  would  provide  for  him  in  a  much 
more  ample  manner.  And  again,  from  the  same  evidence,  it 
appears  that  in  1721  Young  received  from  Wharton  a  bond 
for  £600,  in  compensation  of  expenses  incurred  in  standing 
for  Parliament  at  the  Duke’s  desire,  and  as  an  earnest  of 
greater  services  which  his  Grace  had  promised  him  on  his 
refraining  from  the  spiritual  and  temporal  advantages  of 
taking  orders,  with  a  certainty  of  two  livings  in  the  gift  of 
his  college.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  lay  advancement,  as 
long  as  there  was  any  chance  of  it,  had  more  attractions  for 
Young  than  clerical  preferment ;  and  that  at  this  time  he 
accepted  the  Duke  of  Wharton  as  the  pilot  of  his  career. 

A  more  creditable  relation  of  Young’s  was  his  friendship 
with  Tickell,  with  whom  he  was  in  the  habit  of  interchanging 
criticisms,  and  to  whom  in  1719  —  the  same  year,  let  us  note, 
in  which  he  took  his  doctor’s  degree  —  he  addressed  his 
“  Lines  on  the  Death  of  Addison.”  Close  upon  these  followed 
his  “  Paraphrase  of  part  of  the  Book  of  Job,”  with  a  dedica¬ 
tion  to  Parker,  recently  made  Lord  Chancellor,  showing  that 
the  possession  of  Wharton’s  patronage  did  not  prevent  Young 
from  fishing  in  other  waters.  He  knew  nothing  of  Parker, 
but  that  did  not  prevent  him  from  magnifying  the  new 
Chancellor’s  merits ;  on  the  other  hand,  he  did  know  Whar¬ 
ton,  but  this  again  did  not  prevent  him  from  prefixing  to  his 
tragedy,  “  The  Revenge,”  which  appeared  in  1721,  a  dedication 
attributing  to  the  Duke  all  virtues  as  well  as  all  accomplish¬ 
ments.  In  the  concluding  sentence  of  this  dedication  Young 
naively  indicates  that  a  considerable  ingredient  in  his  grati¬ 
tude  was  a  lively  sense  of  anticipated  favors.  “  My  present 
fortune  is  his  bounty,  and  my  future  his  care,  —  which  I  will 
venture  to  say  will  always  be  remembered  to  his  honor ;  since 
he,  I  know,  intended  his  generosity  as  an  encouragement  to 


16 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


merit,  though,  through  his  very  pardonable  partiality  to  one 
who  bears  him  so  sincere  a  duty  and  respect,  I  happen  to 
receive  the  benefit  of  it.”  Young  was  economical  with  his 
ideas  and  images  ;  he  was  rarely  satisfied  with  using  a  clever 
thing  once,  and  this  bit  of  ingenious  humility  was  afterwards 
made  to  do  duty  in  the  “Instalment,”  a  poem  addressed  to 
Walpole :  — 

“  Be  this  thy  partial  smile,  from  censure  free ; 

’T  was  meant  for  merit,  though  it  fell  on  me.” 

It  was  probably  “  The  Revenge,”  that  Young  was  writing 
when,  as  we  learn  from  Spence’s  anecdotes,  the  Duke  of 
Wharton  gave  him  a  skull  with  a  candle  fixed  in  it,  as  the 
most  appropriate  lamp  by  which  to  write  tragedy.  Accord¬ 
ing  to  Young’s  dedication,  the  Duke  was  “accessary”  to  the 
scenes  of  this  tragedy  in  a  more  important  way,  “  not  only 
by  suggesting  the  most  beautiful  incident  in  them,  but  by 
making  all  possible  provision  for  the  success  of  the  whole.” 
A  statement  which  is  credible,  not  indeed  on  the  ground  of 
Young’s  dedicatory  assertion,  but  from  the  known  ability  of 
the  Duke,  who,  as  Pope  tells  us,  possessed 

“  each  gift  of  Nature  and  of  Art, 

And  wanted  nothing  but  an  honest  heart.” 

The  year  1722  seems  to  have  been  the  period  of  a  visit  to 
Mr.  Dodington,  of  Eastbury,  in  Dorsetshire,  —  the  “  pure  Dor- 
setian  downs,”  celebrated  by  Thomson,  —  in  which  Young 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Voltaire ;  for  in  the  subsequent) 
dedication  of  his  “Sea  Piece”  to  “Mr.  Voltaire,”  he  recalls’ 
their  meeting  on  “Dorset  Downs;”  and  it  was  in  this  year 
that  Christopher  Pitt,  a  gentleman-poet  of  those  days,  ad¬ 
dressed  an  “  Epistle  to  Dr.  Edward  Young,  at  Eastbury,  in 
Dorsetshire,”  which  has  at  least  the  merit  of  this  biographi¬ 
cal  couplet  — 

“  While  with  your  Dodington  retired  you  sit, 

Charmed  with  his  flowing  Burgundy  and  wit.” 

Dodington,  apparently,  was  charmed  in  his  turn,  for  he  told 
Dr.  Wharton  that  Young  was  “  far  superior  to  the  French 


George  Eliot. 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  17 

poet  in  the  variety  and  novelty  of  his  hon-mots  and  repartees.” 
Unfortunately,  the  only  specimen  of  Young’s  wit  on  this 
occasion,  that  has  been  preserved  to  us,  is  the  epigram  repre¬ 
sented  as  an  extempore  retort  (spoken  aside,  surely)  to 
Voltaire’s  criticism  of  Milton’s  episode  of  sin  and  death  :  — 

“  Thou  art  so  witty,  profligate,  and  thin, 

At  once  we  think  thee  Milton,  Death,  and  Sin ;  ” 

an  epigram  which,  in  the  absence  of  “flowing  Burgundy,* 
does  not  strike  us  as  remarkably  brilliant.  Let  us  give  Young 
the  benefit  of  the  doubt  thrown  on  the  genuineness  of  this 
epigram  by  his  own  poetical  dedication,  in  which  he  repre¬ 
sents  himself  as  having  “  soothed  ”  Voltaire’s  “  rage  ”  against 
Milton  u  with  gentle  rhymes ;  ”  though  in  other  respects  that 
dedication  is  anything  but  favorable  to  a  high  estimate  of 
Young’s  wit.  Other  evidence  apart,  we  should  not  be  eager 
for  the  after-dinner  conversation  of  the  man  who  wrote,  - — 

“  Thine  is  the  Drama,  how  renowned ! 

Thine  Epic’s  loftier  trump  to  sound ; 

But  let  Arion’s  sea-strung  harp  be  mine ; 

But  where ’s  his  dolphin  ?  Know’st  thou  where  t 
Mag  that  be  found  in  thee,  Voltaire  !  ” 

The  “  Satires  ”  appeared  in  1725  and  1726,  each,  of  course, 
with  its  laudatory  dedication  and  its  compliments  insinuated 
amongst  the  rhymes.  The  seventh  and  last  is  dedicated  to 
Sir  Robert  Walpole,  is  very  short,  and  contains  nothing  in 
particular  except  lunatic  flattery  of  George  the  First  and  his 
prime  minister,  attributing  that  royal  hog’s  late  escape  from 
a  storm  at  sea  to  the  miraculous  influence  of  his  grand  and 
virtuous  soul ;  for  George,  he  says,  rivals  the  angels :  — 

“  George,  who  in  foes  can  soft  affections  raise, 

And  charm  envenomed  satire  into  praise. 

Nor  human  rage  alone  his  power  perceives, 

But  the  mad  winds  and  the  tumultuous  waves, 

E’en  storms  (Death’s  fiercest  ministers!  )  forbear, 

And  in  their  own  wild  empire  learn  to  spare. 

Thus,  Nature’s  self,  supporting  Man’s  decree, 

Styles  Britain’s  sovereign,  sovereign  of  the  sea.” 


18 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


As  for  Walpole,  what  he  felt  at  this  tremendous  crisis  — 

“  No  powers  of  language,  but  his  own,  can  tell ; 

His  own,  which  Nature  and  the  Graces  form. 

At  will  to  raise,  or  hush,  the  civil  storm.” 

It  is  a  coincidence  worth  noticing,  that  this  Seventh 
Satire  was  published  in  172G,  and  that  the  warrant  of  George 
the  First,  granting  Young  a  pension  of  £200  a  year  from 
Lady-day,  1725,  is  dated  May  3,  1726.  The  gratitude  ex¬ 
hibited  in  this  Satire  may  have  been  chiefly  prospective,  but 
the  “  Instalment,”  a  poem  inspired  by  the  thrilling  event  of 
Walpole’s  installation  as  Knight  of  the  Garter,  was  clearly 
written  with  the  double  ardor  of  a  man  who  has  got  a  pension, 
and  hopes  for  something  more.  His  emotion  about  Walpole 
is  precisely  at  the  same  pitch  as  his  subsequent  emotion 
about  the  Second  Advent.  In  the  “  Instalment  ”  he  says,  — 

“  With  invocations  some  their  hearts  inflame ; 

I  need  no  muse,  a  Walpole  is  my  theme” 

And  of  God  coming  to  Judgment,  he  says,  in  the  “  Night 
Thoughts :  ”  — 

“  I  find  my  inspiration  is  my  theme ; 

The  grandeur  of  my  subject  is  my  muse.” 

Nothing  can  be  feebler  than  this  “  Instalment,”  except  in 
the  strength  of  impudence  with  which  the  writer  professes 
to  scorn  the  prostitution  of  fair  fame,  the  “  profanation  of 
celestial  fire.” 

Herbert  Croft  tells  us  that  Young  made  more  than  three 
thousand  pounds  by  his  “  Satires,”  —  a  surprising  statement, 
taken  in  connection  with  the  reasonable  doubt  he  throws  on 
the  story  related  in  Spence’s  “  Anecdotes,”  that  the  Duke  of 
Wharton  gave  Young  £2,000  for  this  work.  Young,  however, 
seems  to  have  been  tolerably  fortunate  in  the  pecuniary  re¬ 
sults  of  his  publications ;  and  with  his  literary  profits,  his 
annuity  from  Wharton,  his  fellowship,  and  his  pension,  not 
to  mention  other  bounties  which  may  be  inferred  from  the 
high  merits  he  discovers  in  many  men  of  wealth  and  position, 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  19 


we  may  fairly  suppose  that  he  now  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
considerable  fortune  he  left  at  his  death. 

It  is  probable  that  the  Duke  of  Wharton’s  final  departure 
for  the  Continent  and  disgrace  at  Court  in  1726,  and  the 
consequent  cessation  of  Young’s  reliance  on  his  patronage, 
tended  not  only  to  heighten  the  temperature  of  his  poetical 
enthusiasm  for  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  .but  also  to  turn  his 
thoughts  towards  the  Church  again,  as  the  second-best  means 
of  rising  in  the  world.  On  the  accession  of  George  the  Sec¬ 
ond,  Young  found  the  same  transcendent  merits  in  him  as  in 
his  predecessor,  and  celebrated  them  in  a  style  of  poetry  pre¬ 
viously  unattempted  by  him  —  the  Pindaric  ode,  a  poetic 
form  which  helped  him  to  surpass  himself  in  furious  bom¬ 
bast.  “Ocean,  an  Ode:  concluding  with  a  Wish,”  was  the 
title  of  this  piece.  He  afterwards  pruned  it,  and  cut  off, 
amongst  other  things,  the  concluding  Wish,  expressing  the 
yearning  for  humble  retirement  which,  of  course,  had  prompted 
him  to  the  effusion ;  but  we  may  judge  of  the  rejected  stanzas 
by  the  quality  of  those  he  has  allowed  to  remain.  For  exam¬ 
ple,  calling  on  Britain’s  dead  mariners  to  rise  and  meet  their 
“  country’s  full-blown  glory,”  in  the  person  of  the  new  King, 
he  says :  — 

**  What  powerful  charm 
Can  Death  disarm  ? 

Your  long,  your  iron  slumbers  break  ? 

By  Jove,  by  Fame, 

By  Georye's  name, 

Awake  !  awake  !  awake !  awake !  ” 

Soon  after  this  notable  production,  which  was  written  with 
the  ripe  folly  of  forty-seven,  Young  took  orders,  and  was 
presently  appointed  chaplain  to  the  King.  “  The  Brothers,” 
his  third  and  last  tragedy,  which  was  already  in  rehearsal,  he 
now  withdrew  from  the  stage,  and  sought  reputation  in  a  way 
more  accordant  with  the  decorum  of  his  new  profession,  by 
turning  prose  writer.  But  after  publishing  “  A  True  Esti¬ 
mate  of  Human  Life,”  with  a  dedication  to  the  Queen,  as  one 
of  the  “  most  shining  representatives  ”  of  God  on  earth  and 


20 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


a  sermon,  entitled  “  An  Apology  for  Princes ;  or,  tlie  Rever¬ 
ence  due  to  Government,”  preached  before  the  House  of  Com¬ 
mons,  his  Pindaric  ambition  again  seized  him,  and  he  matched 
his  former  ode  by  another,  called  “  Imperium  Pelagi ;  a  Naval 
Lyric ;  written  in  imitation  of  Pindar’s  spirit,  occasioned  by 
his  Majesty’s  return  from  Hanover,  1729,  and  the  succeeding 
Peace.”  Since  he  afterwards  suppressed  this  second  ode,  we 
must  suppose  that  it  was  rather  worse  than  the  first.  Next 
came  his  two  “  Epistles  to  Pope,  concerning  the  Authors  of 
the  Age,”  remarkable  for  nothing  but  the  audacity  of  affecta¬ 
tion  with  which  the  most  servile  of  poets  professes  to  despise 
servility. 

In  1730  Young  was  presented  by  his  college  with  the  rec¬ 
tory  of  Welwyn,  in  Hertfordshire,  and,  in  the  following  year, 
when  he  was  just  fifty,  he  married  Lady  Elizabeth  Lee,  a 
widow  with  two  children,  who  seems  to  have  been  in  favor 
with  Queen  Caroline,  and  who  probably  had  an  income  — 
two  attractions  which  doubtless  enhanced  the  power  of  her 
other  charms.  Pastoral  duties  and  domesticity  probably 
cured  Young  of  some  bad  habits  ;  but,  unhappily,  they  did 
not  cure  him  either  of  flattery  or  of  fustian.  Three  more 
odes  followed,  quite  as  bad  as  those  of  his  bachelorhood,  ex¬ 
cept  that  in  the  third  he  announced  the  wise  resolution  of 
never  writing  another.  It  must  have  been  about  this  time, 
since  Young  was  now  “turned  of  fifty,”  that  he  wrote  the 
letter  to  Mrs.  Howard  (afterwards  Lady  Suffolk),  George  the 
Second’s  mistress,  which  proves  that  he  used  other  engines, 
besides  Pindaric  ones,  in  “  besieging  Court  favor.”  The  let¬ 
ter  is  too  characteristic  to  be  omitted  :  — - 


Monday  Morning. 


Madam,  —  I  know  his  majesty’s  goodness  to  his  servants,  and  hi? 
love  of  justice  in  general,  so  well,  that  I  am  confident,  if  His  Majesty 
knew  my  case,  I  should  not  have  any  cause  to  despair  of  his  gracious 
favor  to  me. 


Abilities. 

Good  Manner* 

Service. 

Age. 


Want. 

Sufferings  \ 

and  >  for  his  majesty 

Zeal  ) 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  21 


These,  madam,  are  the  proper  points  of  consideration  in  the  person  that 
humbly  hopes  his  majesty’s  favor. 

As  to  Abilities,  all  I  can  presume  to  say  is,  I  have  done  the  best  I 
could  to  improve  them. 

As  to  Good  manners ,  I  desire  no  favor,  if  any  just  objection  lies 
against  them. 

As  for  Service,  I  have  been  near  seven  years  in  his  majesty’s,  and 
never  omitted  any  duty  in  it,  which  few  can  say. 

As  for  Age,  I  am  turned  of  fifty. 

As  for  Want,  I  have  no  manner  of  preferment. 

As  for  Sufferings,  I  have  lost  £300  per  ann.  uy  being  in  his 
majesty’s  service;  as  I  have'  shown  in  a  Representation  which  his 
majesty  has  been  so  good  as  to  read  and  consider. 

As  for  Zeal,  I  have  written  nothing  without  showing  my  duty  to 
their  majesties,  and  some  pieces  are  dedicated  to  them. 

This,  madam,  is  the  short  and  true  state  of  my  case.  They  that 
make  their  court  to  the  ministers,  and  not  their  majesties,  succeed  bet¬ 
ter.  If  my  case  deserves  some  consideration,  and  you  can  serve  me  in 
it,  I  humbly  hope  and  believe  you  will:  I  shall,  therefore,  trouble 
you  no  farther ;  but  beg  leave  to  subscribe  myself,  with  truest  respect 
and  gratitude, 

Yours,  &c., 

Edward  Young. 

P.  S.  I  have  some  hope  that  my  Lord  Townshend  is  my  friend ; 
if  therefore  soon,  and  before  he  leaves  the  court,  you  had  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  mentioning  me,  with  that  favor  you  have  been  so  good  to 
show,  I  think  it  would  not  fail  of  success ;  and,  if  not,  I  shall  owe  you 
more  than  any.  ( Suffolk  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  285.) 

Young’s  wife  died  in  1741,  leaving  him  one  son,  born  in 
1733.  That  he  had  attached  himself  strongly  to  her  two 
daughters  by  her  former  marriage,  there  is  better  evidence  in 
the  report,  mentioned  by  Mrs.  Montagu,  of  his  practical  kind¬ 
ness  and  liberality  to  the  younger,  than  in  his  lamentations 
over  the  elder  as  the  Narcissa  of  the  “Night  Thoughts.” 
Narcissa  had  died  in  1735,  shortly  after  marriage  to  Mr 
Temple,  the  son  of  Lord  Palmerston ;  and  Mr.  Temple  him' 
self,  after  a  second  marriage,  died  in  1740,  a  year  before  Lad) 
Elizabeth  Young.  These,  then,  are  the  three  deaths  suppost 


22 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIO'h 


to  have  inspired  “  The  Complaint,”  which  forms  the  three 
first  books  of  the  “  Night  Thoughts  :  ”  — 

“  Insatiate  archer,  could  not  one  suffice  ? 

Thy  shaft  flew  thrice  :  and  thrice  my  peace  was  slain : 

And  thrice,  ere  thrice  yon  moon  had  filled  her  horn.” 

Since  we  find  Young  departing  from  the  truth  of  dates,  in 
order  to  heighten  the  effect  of  his  calamity,  or  at  least  of  his 
climax,  we  need  not  be  surprised  that  he  allowed  his  imagi¬ 
nation  great  freedom  in  other  matters  besides  chronology, 
and  that  the  character  of  Philander  can,  by  no  process,  be 
made  to  fit  Mr.  Temple.  The  supposition  that  the  much- 
lectured  Lorenzo,  of  the  “Night  Thoughts,”  was  Young’s 
own  son,  is  hardly  rendered  more  absurd  by  the  fact  that  the 
poem  was  written  when  that  son  was  a  boy,  than  by  the  obvi¬ 
ous  artificiality  of  the  characters  Young  introduces  as  targets 
for  his  arguments  and  rebukes.  Among  all  the  trivial  efforts 
of  conjectured  criticism,  there  can  hardly  be  one  more  futile 
than  the  attempt  to  discover  the  original  of  those  pitiable 
lay-figures,  the  Lorenzos  and  Altamonts  of  Young’s  didac¬ 
tic  prose  and  poetry.  His  muse  never  stood  face  to  face 
with  a  genuine,  living  human  being ;  she  would  have  been  as 
much  startled  by  such  an  encounter  as  a  necromancer  whose 
incantations  and  blue  fire  had  actually  conjured  up  a  demon. 

The  “Night  Thoughts”  appeared  between  1741  and  1745. 
Although  he  declares  in  them  that  he  has  chosen  God  for  his 
“  patron  ”  henceforth,  this  is  not  at  all  to  the  prejudice  of 
some  half-dozen  lords,  duchesses,  and  right  honorables,  who 
have  the  privilege  of  sharing  finely  turned  compliments  with 
their  co-patron.  The  line  which  closed  the  Second  Night  in 
the  earlier  editions  — 

“  Wits  spare  not  Heaven,  O  Wilmington !  —  nor  thee  ”  — 

is  an  intense  specimen  of  that  perilous  juxtaposition  of  ideas 
by  which  Young,  in  his  incessant  search  after  point  and 
novelty,  unconsciously  converts  his  compliments  into  sar¬ 
casms  ;  and  his  apostrophe  to  the  moon,  as  more  likely  to  be 
favorable  to  his  song  if  he  calls  her  “  fair  Portland  of  the 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  28 


skies,”  is  worthy  even  of  his  Pindaric  ravings.  His  ostentar 
tious  renunciation  of  worldly  schemes,  and  especially  of  his 
twenty  years’  siege  of  Court  favor,  are  in  the  tone  of  one  who 
retains  some  hope,  in  the  midst  of  his  querulousness. 

He  descended  from  the  astronomical  rhapsodies  of  his 
Ninth  Night,  published  in  1745,  to  more  terrestrial  strains, 
in  his  “  Reflections  on  the  Public  Situation  of  the  Kingdom,” 
dedicated  to  the  Duke  of  Newcastle ;  but  in  this  critical  year 
we  get  a  glimpse  of  him  through  a  more  prosaic  and  less  re« 
fracting  medium.  He  spent  a  part  of  the  year  at  Tunbridge 
Wells ;  and  Mrs.  Montagu,  who  was  there  too,  gives  a  very 
lively  picture  of  the  “  divine  doctor,”  in  her  letters  to  the 
Duchess  of  Portland,  on  whom  Young  had  bestowed  the  su¬ 
perlative  bombast  to  which  we  have  recently  alluded.  We 
shall  borrow  the  quotations  from  Dr.  Doran,  in  spite  of  their 
length,  because,  to  our  mind,  they  present  the  most  agreeable 
portrait  we  possess  of  Young : — 

l(  I  have  great  joy  in  Dr.  Young,  whom  I  disturbed  in  a  reverie. 
At  tint  he  started,  then  bowed,  then  fell  back  into  a  surprise;  then 
begar  u  speech,  relapsed  into  his  astonishment  two  or  three  times, 
forgot  what  he  had  been  saying;  began  a  new  subject,  and  so  went  on. 
I  told  him  your  grace  desired  he  would  write  longer  letters  ;  to  which 
he  cried  ‘  Ha  !  ’  most  emphatically,  and  I  leave  you  to  interpret  what 
it  meant.  He  has  made  a  friendship  with  one  person  here,  whom  I 
believe  you  would  not  imagine  to  have  been  made  for  his  bosom  friend. 
You  would,  perhaps,  suppose  it  was  a  bishop  or  dean,  a  prebend,  a 
pious  preacher,  a  clergyman  of  exemplary  life,  or,  if  a  layman,  of  most 
virtuous  conversation,  one  that  had  paraphrased  St.  Matthew,  or  wrote 
comments  on  St.  Paul.  .  .  .  You  would  not  guess  that  this  asso¬ 
ciate  of  the  doctor’s  was  —  old  Cibber  !  Certainly  in  their  religious, 
moral,  and  civil  character,  there  is  no  relation ;  but  in  their  dramatic 
capacity  there  is  some.”  —  [Mrs.  Montagu  was  not  aware  that  Cibber, 
whom  Young  had  uamed  not  disparagingly  in  his  Satires,  was  th6 
brother  of  his  old  schoolfellow  ;  but  to  return  to  our  hero.]  “The 
«*ters,”  says  Mrs.  Montagu,  “  have  raised  his  spirits  to  a  fine  pitch,  as 
your  grace  will  imagine,  when  I  tell  you  how  sublime  an  answer  he 
made  to  a  very  vulgar  question.  I  asked  him  how  long  he  stayed  at 
the  Wells  •  he  said,  1  As  long  as  my  rival  stayed ;  —  as  long  as  the  sud 


24 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


did.’  Among  the  visitors  at  the  Wells  were  Lady  Sunderland  (wife 
of  Sir  Robert  Sutton)  and  her  sister,  Mrs.  Tichborne.  He  did  an 
admirable  thing  to  Lady  Sunderland :  on  her  mentioning  Sir  Robert 
Sutton,  he  asked  her  where  Sir  Robert’s  lady  was  ;  on  which  we  all 
laughed  very  heartily,  and  I  brought  him  off,  half  ashamed,  to  my 
lodgings,  where,  during  breakfast,  he  assured  me  he  had  asked  after 
Lady  Sunderland,  because  he  had  a  great  honor  for  her ;  and  that, 
having  a  respect  for  her  sister,  he  designed  to  have  inquired  after  her, 
if  we  had  not  put  it  out  of  his  head  by  laughing  at  him.  You  must 
know  Mrs.  Tichborne  sat  next  to  Lady  Sunderland.  It  would  have 
been  admirable  to  have  had  him  finish  his  compliment  in  that  man¬ 
ner.  .  .  .  His  expressions  all  bear  the  stamp  of  novelty,  and  his 
thoughts  of  sterling  sense.  He  practises  a  kind  of  philosophical  ab¬ 
stinence.  .  .  .  He  carried  Mrs.  Rolt  and  myself  to  Tunbridge,  five 
miles  from  hence,  where  we  were  to  see  some  fine  old  ruins.  .  .  . 
First  rode  the  doctor  on  a  tall  steed,  decently  caparisoned  in  dark 
gray ;  next,  ambled  Mrs.  Rolt  on  a  hackney  horse ;  .  .  .  then  fol¬ 
lowed  your  humble  servant  on  a  milk-white  palfrey.  I  rode  on  in 
safety,  and  at  leisure  to  observe  the  company,  especially  the  two 
figures  that  brought  up  the  rear.  The  first  was  my  servant,  valiantly 
armed  with  two  uncharged  pistols;  the  last  was  the  doctor’s  man 
whose  uncombed  hair  so  resembled  the  mane  of  the  horse  he  rode,  one 
could  not  help  imagining  they  were  of  kin,  and  wishing,  for  the  honor 
of  the  family,  that  they  had  had  one  comb  betwixt  them.  On  his 
head  was  a  velvet  cap,  much  resembling  a  black  saucepan,  and  on  his 
side  hung  a  little  basket.  At  last  we  arrived  at  the  King’s  Head, 
where  the  loyalty  of  the  doctor  induced  him  to  alight  ;  and  then, 
knight-errant-like,  he  took  his  damsels  from  off  their  palfreys,  and 
courteously  handed  us  into  the  inn.  .  .  .  The  party  returned  to 
the  Wells;  and  ‘the  silver  Cynthia  held  up  her  lamp  in  the  heavens’ 
the  while.  The  night  silenced  all  but  our  divine  doctor,  who  some¬ 
times  uttered  things  fit  to  be  spoken  in  a  season  when  all  nature  seems 
to  be  hushed  and  hearkening.  I  followed,  gathering  wisdom  as  I  went, 
till  I  found,  by  my  horse’s  stumbling,  that  I  was  in  a  bad  road,  and 
that  the  blind  was  leading  the  blind.  So  I  placed  my  servant  between 
the  doctor  and  myself;  which  he  not  perceiving,  went  on  in  a  most 
philosophical  strain,  to  the  great  admiration  of  my  poor  clown  of  a 
servant,  who,  not  being  wrought  up  to  any  pitch  of  enthusiasm,  nor 
making  any  answer  to  all  the  fine  things  he  heard,  the  doctor,  won¬ 
dering  I  was  dumb,  and  grieving  I  was  so  stupid,  looked  round  and 
declared  his  surprise.” 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- W ORLDLINESS.  25 


Young’s  oddity  and  absence  of  mind  are  gathered  from 
other  sources  besides  these  stories  of  Mrs.  Montagu’s,  and 
gave  rise  to  the  report  that  he  was  the  original  of  Fielding’s 
“  Parson  Adams ;  ”  but  this  Croft  denies,  and  mentions  another 
Young,  who  really  sat  for  the  portrait,  and  who,  we  imagine, 
had  both  more  Greek  and  more  genuine  simplicity  than  the 
poet.  His  love  of  chatting  with  Colley  Cibber  was  an  in¬ 
dication  that  the  old  predilection  for  the  stage  survived,  in 
spite  of  his  emphatic  contempt  for  “all  joys  but  joys  that 
never  can  expire ;  ”  and  the  production  of  “  The  Brothers,” 
at  Drury  Lane  in  1753,  after  a  suppression  of  fifteen  years, 
was  perhaps  not  entirely  due  to  the  expressed  desire  to  give 
the  proceeds  to  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel. 
The  author’s  profits  were  not  more  than  £400,  —  in  those 
days  a  disappointing  sum ;  and  Young,  as  we  learn  from  his 
friend  Richardson,  did  not  make  this  the  limit  of  his  dona¬ 
tion,  but  gave  a  thousand  guineas  to  the  Society.  “  I  had 
some  talk  with  him,”  says  Richardson  in  one  of  his  letters, 
“  about  this  great  action.  ‘  I  always,’  said  he,  ‘  intended  to 
do  something  handsome  for  the  Society.  Had  I  deferred  it 
to  my  demise,  I  should  have  given  away  my  son’s  money. 
All  the  world  are  inclined  to  pleasure;  could  I  have  given 
myself  a  greater  by  disposing  of  the  sum  to  a  different  use, 
I  should  have  done  it.’  ”  Surely  he  took  his  old  friend  Rich¬ 
ardson  for  Lorenzo ! 

His  next  work  was  “  The  Centaur  not  Fabulous ;  in  Six 
Letters  to  a  Friend,  on  the  Life  in  Vogue,”  which  reads 
very  much  like  the  most  objurgatory  parts  of  the  “Night 
Thoughts  ”  reduced  to  prose.  It  is  preceded  by  a  preface 
which,  though  addressed  to  a  lady,  is,  in  its  denunciations  of 
vice,  as  grossly  indecent  and  almost  as  flippant  as  the  epi¬ 
logues  written  by  “  friends,”  which  he  allowed  to  be  reprinted 
after  his  tragedies  in  the  latest  edition  of  his  works.  We 
like  much  better  than  “The  Centaur,”  “Conjectures  on  Origi¬ 
nal  Composition,”  written  in  1759,  for  the  sake,  he  says,  of 
communicating  to  the  world  the  well-known  anecdote  about 
Addison’s  death-bed,  and,  with  the  exception  of  his  poem  on 
Resignation,  the  last  thing  he  ever  published. 


26 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT.' 


The  estrangement  from  his  son  which  must  have  embittered 
the  later  years  of  his  life,  appears  to  have  begun  not  many 
years  after  the  mother’s  death.  On  the  marriage  of  her 
second  daughter,  who  had  previously  presided  over  Young’s 
household,  a  Mrs.  Hallows,  understood  to  be  a  woman  of  dis¬ 
creet  age,  and  the  daughter  (or  widow)  of  a  clergyman  who 
was  an  old  friend  of  Young’s,  became  housekeeper  at  Welwyn. 
Opinions  about  ladies  are  apt  to  differ.  “  Mrs.  Hallows  was 
a  woman  of  piety,  improved  by  reading,”  says  one  witness. 
“She  was  a  very  coarse  woman,”  says  Dr.  Johnson;  and  we 
shall  presently  find  some  indirect  evidence  that  her  temper 
was  perhaps  not  quite  so  much  improved  as  her  piety.  Ser¬ 
vants,  it  seems,  were  not  fond  of  remaining  long  in  the  house 
with  her ;  a  satirical  curate,  named  Kidgell,  hints  at  “  drops 
of  juniper”  taken  as  a  cordial  (but  perhaps  he  was  spiteful, 
and  a  teetotaler) ;  and  Young’s  son  is  said  to  have  told  his 
father  that  “an  old  man  should  not  resign  himself  to  the 
management  of  anybody.”  The  result  was,  that  the  son  was 
banished  from  home  for  the  rest  of  his  father’s  lifetime, 
though  Young  seems  never  to  have  thought  of  disinheriting 
him. 

Our  latest  glimpses  of  the  aged  poet  are  derived  from 
certain  letters  of  Mr.  J ones,  his  curate,  —  letters  preserved  in 
the  British  Museum,  and  happily  made  accessible  to  common 
mortals  in  Nichols’s  “Anecdotes.”  Mr.  Jones  was  a  man  of 
some  literary  activity  and  ambition,  — a  collector  of  interest¬ 
ing  documents,  and  one  of  those  concerned  in  the  “  Free  and 
Candid  Disquisitions,”  the  design  of  which  was  “to  point  out 
such  things  in  our  ecclesiastical  establishment  as  want  to  be 
reviewed  and  amended.”  On  these  and  kindred  subjects  he 
corresponded  with  Dr.  Birch,  occasionally  troubling  him  with 
queries  and  manuscripts.  We  have  a  respect  for  Mr.  Jones. 
Unlike  any  person  who  ever  troubled  us  with  queries  or 
manuscripts,  he  mitigates  the  infliction  by  such  gifts  as  “  a 
fat  pullet,”  wishing  he  “had  anything  better  to  send;  but 
this  depauperizing  vicarage  [of  Alconbury]  too  often  checks 
the  freedom  and  forwardness  of  my  mind.”  Another  day 


WOliLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WOliLDLINESS.  27 


comes  a  “pound  canister  of  tea;”  another,  a  “young  fatted 
goose.”  Clearly,  Mr.  Jones  was  entirely  unlike  your  literary 
correspondents  of  the  present  day  ;  he  forwarded  manuscripts, 
but  he  had  “  bowels,”  and  forwarded  poultry  too.  His  first 
letter  from  Welwyn  is  dated  June,  1759,  not  quite  six  years 
before  Young’s  death.  In  June,  1762,  he  expresses  a  wish 
to  go  to  London  “  this  summer.  But,”  he  continues,  — 

“  My  time  and  paius  are  almost  continually  taken  up  here,  and  .  .  . 
I  have  been,  I  now  find,  a  considerable  loser,  upon  the  whole,  by  con-.- 
tinuing  here  so  long.  The  consideration  of  this,  and  the  inconven¬ 
iences  I  sustained,  and  do  still  experience,  from  my  late  illness, 
obliged  me  at  last  to  acquaint  the  Doctor  [Youug]  with  my  case,  and 
to  assure  him  that  I  plainly  perceived  the  duty  and  confinement  here 
to  be  too  much  for  me ;  for  which  reasou  I  must,  I  said,  beg  to  be  at 
liberty  to  resign  my  charge  at  Michaelmas.  I  began  to  give  him  these 
notices  in  February,  when  I  was  very  ill ;  and  now  1  perceive,  by 
what  he  told  me  the  other  day,  that  he  is  in  some  difficulty  :  for  which 
reason  he  is  at  last,  he  says,  resolved  to  advertise,  and  even,  which 
is  much  wondered  at,  to  raise  the  salary  considerably  higher.  (What 
he  allowed  my  predecessors  was  £20  per  annum  ;  and  now  he  proposes 
£50,  as  he  tells  me.)  I  never  asked  him  to  raise  it  for  me,  though  I 
well  knew  it  was  not  equal  to  the  duty  ;  nor  did  I  say  a  word  about 
myself  when  he  lately  suggested  to  me  his  intentions  upon  this 
subject.” 

In  a  postscript  to  this  letter,  he  says :  — 

“  I  may  mention  to  you  farther,  as  a  friend  that  may  be  trusted, 
that,  in  all  likelihood,  the  poor  old  gentleman  will  not  find  it  a  very 
easy  matter,  unless  by  dint  of  money,  and  force  upon  himself,  to  pro- 
sure  a  man  that  he  can  like  for  his  next  curate,  nor  one  that  will  stay 
with  him  so  long  as  I  have  done.  Then,  his  great  age  will  recur  to 
people’s  thoughts ;  and  if  he  has  any  foibles,  either  in  temper  or  con¬ 
duct,  they  will  be  sure  not  to  be  forgotten  on  this  occasion  by  those 
who  know  him  ;  and  those  who  do  not,  will  probably  be  on  their 
guard.  On  these  and  the  like  considerations,  it  is  by  no  means  an 
eligible  office  to  be  seeking  out  for  a  curate  for  him,  as  he  has  several 
times  wished  me  to  do ;  and  would,  if  he  knew  that  1  am  now  writing 
to  you,  wish  your  assistance  also.  Rut  my  best  friends  here,  who  well 
foresee  the  probable  consecj lienees,  and  wish  me  well,  earnestly  dissuade 


28 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


me  from  complying :  and  I  will  decline  the  office  with  as  much  decencj 
as  1  can :  but  high  salary  will,  I  suppose,  fetch  in  somebody  or  other, 
soon.” 

In  the  following  July  he  writes :  — 

“  The  old  gentleman  here  (I  may  venture  to  tell  you  freely) 
seems  to  me  to  be  in  a  pretty  odd  way  of  late,  —  moping,  dejected, 
self-willed,  and  as  if  surrounded  with  some  perplexing  circumstances. 
Though  I  visit  him  pretty  frequently  for  short  intervals,  I  say  very 
little  to  his  affairs,  not  choosing  to  be  a  party  concerned,  especially  in 
cases  of  so  critical  and  tender  a  nature.  There  is  much  mystery  in 
almost  all  his  temporal  affairs,  as  well  as  in  many  of  his  speculative 
theories.  Whoever  lives  in  this  neighborhood  to  see  his  exit,  will 
probably  see  and  hear  some  very  strange  things.  Time  will  show,  — 
1  am  afraid,  not  greatly  to  his  credit.  There  is  thought  to  be  an  irre¬ 
movable  obstruction  to  his  happiness  within  his  walls ,  as  well  as  another 
without  them ,  but  the  former  is  the  more  powerful,  and  like  to  continue 
so.  He  has  this  day  been  tryiug  anew  to  engage  me  to  stay  with 
him.  No  lucrative  views  can  tempt  me  to  sacrifice  my  liberty  or  my 
health,  to  such  measures  as  are  proposed  here.  Nor  do  I  like  to  have 
to  do  with  persons  ivhose  word  and  honor  cannot  be  depended  on.  So 
much  for  this  very  odd  and  unhappy  topic.” 

In  August,  Mr.  Jones’s  tone  is  slightly  modified.  Earnest 
entreaties,  not  lucrative  considerations,  have  induced  him  to 
cheer  the  Doctor’s  dejected  heart  by  remaining  at  Welwyn 
some  time  longer.  The  Doctor  is,  “in  various  respects,  a 
very  unhappy  man,”  and  few  know  so  much  of  these  respects 
as  Mr.  Jones.  In  September  he  recurs  to  the  subject :  — 

“  My  ancient  gentleman  here  is  still  full  of  trouble  :  which  moves 
my  concern,  though  it  moves  only  the  secret  laughter  of  many,  and 
some  untoward  surmises  in  disfavor  of  him  and  his  household.  The 
loss  of  a  very  large  sum  of  money  (about  £200)  is  talked  of ;  whereof 
this  vill  and  neighborhood  is  full.  Some  disbelieve ;  others  say,  ‘  It 
is  no  wonder,  where  about  eighteen  or  more  servants  are  sometimes  taken 
and  dismissed  in  the  course  of  a  year?  The  gentleman  himself  is 
allowed  by  all  to  be  far  more  harmless  and  easy  in  his  family  than 
some  one  else  who  hath  too  much  the  lead  in  it.  This,  among  others, 
was  one  reason  for  my  late  motion  to  quit.” 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- W7 ORLDLINESS.  29 


No  other  mention  of  Young’s  affairs  occurs  until  April  2, 
1765,  when  he  says  that  Dr.  Young  is  very  ill,  attended  by 
two  physicians. 

“Having  mentioned  this  young  gentleman  [Dr.  Young’s  son],  I 
would  acquaint  you  next,  that  he  came  hither  this  morning,  having 
been  sent  for,  as  I  am  told,  by  the  direction  of  Mrs.  Hallows.  Indeed, 
she  intimated  to  me  as  much  herself.  And,  if  this  be  so,  I  must  say 
that  it  is  one  of  the  most  prudent  acts  she  ever  did,  or  could  have 
done  in  such  a  case  as  this ;  as  it  may  prove  a  means  of  preventing 
much  confusion  after  the  death  of  the  Doctor.  I  have  had  some  little 
discourse  with  the  son :  he  seems  much  affected,  and  I  believe  really 
is  so.  He  earnestly  wishes  his  father  might  be  pleased  to  ask  after 
him  ;  for  you  must  know  he  has  not  yet  done  this,  nor  is,  in  my  opin¬ 
ion,  like  to  do  it.  And  it  has  been  said,  farther,  that  upon  a  late 
application  made  to  him  on  the  behalf  of  his  son,  he  desired  that  no 
more  might  be  said  to  him  about  it.  How  true  this  may  be  I  can¬ 
not  as  yet  be  certain ;  all  I  shall  say  is,  it  seems  not  improbable  .  .  . 
I  heartily  wish  the  ancient  man’s  heart  may  prove  tender  towards  his 
6on ;  though,  knowing  him  so  well,  I  can  scarce  hope  to  hear  such 
desirable  news .” 

Eleven  days  later  he  writes :  — 

“  I  have  now  the  pleasure  to  acquaint  you  that  the  late  Dr.  Young, 
though  he  had  for  many  years  kept  his  son  at  a  distance  from  him, 
yet  has  now  at  last  left  him  all  his  possessions,  after  the  payment  of 
certain  legacies  ;  so  that  the  young  gentleman,  who  bears  a  fair  char¬ 
acter  and  behaves  well,  as  far  as  I  can  hear  or  see,  will,  I  hope,  soon 
enjoy  and  make  a  prudent  use  of  a  handsome  fortune.  The  father, 
on  his  death-bed,  and  since  my  return  from  London,  was  applied  to  in 
the  tenderest  manner,  by  one  of  his  physicians  and  by  another  person, 
to  admit  the  son  into  his  presence,  —  to  make  submission,  iutreat  for¬ 
giveness,  and  obtain  his  blessing.  As  to  an  interview  with  his  son, 
he  intimated  that  he  chose  to  decline  it,  as  his  spirits  were  then  low 
and  his  nerves  weak.  With  regard  to  the  next  particular,  he  said,  ‘I 
heartily  forgive  him;  ’  and  upon  mention  of  this  last,  he  gently  lifted 
up  his  hand,  and  letting  it  gently  fall,  pronounced  these  words,  1  God 
bless  him!'  ...  I  know  it  will  give  you  pleasure  to  be  farther  in- 
formed  that  he  was  pleased  to  make  respectful  mention  of  me  in  his 
will  — expressing  nis  satisfaction  in  my  care  of  his  parish,  bequeath¬ 
ing  to  me  a  handsome  legacy,  and  appointing  me  to  be  one  of  his 
•xecutors.” 


30 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


So  far  Mr.  Jones,  in  his  confidential  correspondence  with 
a  “  friend  who  may  he  trusted.”  In  a  letter  communicated 
apparently  by  him  to  the  “  Gentleman’s  Magazine,”  seven 
years  later,  —  namely,  in  1782,  —  on  the  appearance  of  Croft’s 
biography  of  Young,  we  find  him  speaking  of  “  the  ancient 
gentleman,”  in  a  tone  of  reverential  eulogy,  quite  at  variance 
with  the  free  comments  we  have  just  quoted.  But  the  Rev. 
John  Jones  was  probably  of  opinion  with  Mrs.  Montagu, 
whose  contemporary  and  retrospective  letters  are  also  set  in  a 
different  key,  that  “  the  interests  of  religion  were  connected 
with  the  character  of  a  man  so  distinguished  for  piety  as  Dr. 
Young.”  At  all  events,  a  subsequent  quasi-official  statement 
weighs  nothing  as  evidence  against  contemporary,  spontane¬ 
ous,  and  confidential  hints. 

To  Mrs.  Hallows,  Young  left  a  legacy  of  £1,000,  with  the 
request  that  she  would  destroy  all  his  manuscripts.  This 
final  request,  from  some  unknown  cause,  was  not  complied 
with,  and  among  the  papers  he  left  behind  him  was  the 
following  letter  from  Archbishop  Seeker,  which  probably 
marks  the  date  of  his  latest  effort  after  preferment. 

Deanery  of  St.  Paul’s,  July  8,  1758. 

Good  Dr.  Young,  —  I  have  long  wondered  that  more  suitable 
notice  of  your  great  merit  hath  not  been  taken  by  persons  in  power. 
But  how  to  remedy  the  omission  I  see  not.  No  encouragement  hath 
ever  been  given  me  to  mention  things  of  this  nature  to  his  Majesty. 
And  therefore,  in  all  likelihood,  the  only  consequence  of  doing  it  would 
be  weakening  the  little  influence  which  else  I  may  possibly  have  on 
some  other  occasions.  Your  fortune  and  your  reputation  set  you  above 
the  need  of  advancement;  and  your  sentiments  above  that  concern  for 
it,  on  your  own  account,  which,  on  that  of  the  public,  is  sincerely 
felt  by 

Your  loving  Brother, 

Tho.  Cant. 

The  “  loving  Brother’s  ”  irony  is  severe  ! 

Perhaps  the  least  questionable  testimony  to  the  better  side 
of  Young’s  character,  is  that  of  Bishop  Hildesley,  who,  as 
the  vicar  of  a  parish  near  Welwyn,  had  been  Young’s  neigh* 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  31 


bor  for  upwards  of  twenty  years.  The  affection  of  the  clergy 
for  each  other,  we  have  observed,  is,  like  that  of  the  fair  sex, 
not  at  all  of  a  blind  and  infatuated  kind ;  and  we  may  there¬ 
fore  the  rather  believe  them  when  they  give  each  other 
any  extra-official  praise.  Bishop  Hildesley,  then  writing  of 
Young  to  Richardson,  says  :  — 

11  The  impertinence  of  my  frequent  visits  to  him  was  amply  re- 
warded;  forasmuch  as,  I  can  truly  say,  he  never  received  me  hut 
with  agreeable  open  complacency ;  and  I  never  left  him  but  with 
profitable  pleasure  and  improvement.  He  was  one  or  other,  the  most 
modest,  the  most  patient  of  contradiction,  and  the  most  informing  and 
entertaining  I  ever  conversed  with  —  at  least,  of  any  man  who  had  so 
just  pretensions  to  pertinacity  and  reserve.” 

Mr.  Langton,  however,  who  was  also  a  frequent  visitor  of 
Young’s,  informed  Boswell  — 

“  That  there  was  an  air  of  benevolence  in  his  manner  ;  but  that  he 
could  obtain  from  him  less  information  than  he  had  hoped  to  receive 
from  one  who  had  lived  so  much  in  intercourse  with  the  brightest 
men  of  what  had  been  called  the  Augustan  Age  of  England ;  and  that 
he  showed  a  degree  of  eager  curiosity  concerning  the  common  occur¬ 
rences  that  were  then  passing,  which  appeared  somewhat  remarkable 
in  a  man  of  such  intellectual  stores,  of  such  an  advanced  age, 
and  who  had  retired  from  life  with  declared  disappointment  in  his 
expectations.” 

The  same  substance,  we  know,  will  exhibit  different  quali¬ 
ties  under  different  tests ;  and,  after  all,  imperfect  reports  of 
individual  impressions,  whether  immediate  or  traditional, 
are  a  very  frail  basis  on  which  to  build  our  opinion  of  a  man. 
One’s  character  may  be  very  indifferently  mirrored  in  the 
mind  of  the  most  intimate  neighbor ;  it  all  depends  on  the 
quality  of  that  gentleman’s  reflecting  surface. 

But,  discarding  any  inferences  from  such  uncertain  evi¬ 
dence,  the  outline  of  Young’s  character  is  too  distinctly  trace¬ 
able  in  the  well-attested  facts  of  his  life,  and  yet  more  in  the 
self-betrayal  that  runs  through  all  his  works,  for  us  to  fear 
that  our  general  estimate  of  him  may  be  false.  For,  while 


32 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


no  poet  seems  less  easy  and  spontaneous  than  Young,  no 
poet  discloses  himself  more  completely.  Men’s  minds  have 
no  hiding-place  out  of  themselves ;  their  affectations  do  but 
betray  another  phase  of  their  nature.  And  if,  in  the  present 
view  of  Young,  we  seem  to  be  more  intent  on  laying  bare 
unfavorable  facts  than  on  shrouding  them  in  “  charitable 
speeches,”  it  is  not  because  we  have  any  irreverential  pleas¬ 
ure  in  turning  men’s  characters  “the  seamy  side  without,” 
but  because  we  see  no  great  advantage  in  considering  a  man 
as  he  was  not.  Young’s  biographers  and  critics  have  usually 
set  out  from  the  position  that  he  was  a  great  religious  teacher, 
and  that  his  poetry  is  morally  sublime  ;  and  they  have  toned 
down  his  failings  into  harmony  with  their  conception  of  the 
divine  and  the  poet.  For  our  own  part,  we  set  out  from  pre¬ 
cisely  the  opposite  conviction  —  namely,  that  the  religious 
and  moral  spirit  of  Young’s  poetry  is  low  and  false ;  and 
we  think  it  of  some  importance  to  show  that  the  “  Night 
Thoughts  ”  are  the  reflex  of  a  mind  in  which  the  higher 
human  sympathies  were  inactive.  This  judgment  is  en¬ 
tirely  opposed  to  our  youthful  predilections  and  enthusiasm. 
The  sweet  garden-breath  of  early  enjoyment  lingers  about 
many  a  page  of  the  “  Night  Thoughts,”  and  even  of  the 
“  Last  Day,”  giving  an  extrinsic  charm  to  passages  of  stilted 
rhetoric  and  false  sentiment;  but  the  sober  and  repeated 
reading  of  maturer  years  has  convinced  us  that  it  would 
hardly  be  possible  to  find  a  more  typical  instance  than 
Young’s  poetry,  of  the  mistake  which  substitutes  interested 
obedience  for  sympathetic  emotion,  and  baptizes  egoism  as 
religion. 

Pope  said  of  Young,  that  he  had  “much  of  a  sublime  gen 
ius  without  common  sense.”  The  deficiency  Pope  meant  to 
indicate  was,  we  imagine,  moral  rather  than  intellectual ;  it 
was  the  want  of  that  fine  sense  of  what  is  fitting  in  speech 
and  action,  which  is  often  eminently  possessed  by  men  and 
women  whose  intellect  is  of  a  very  common  order,  but  who 
have  the  sincerity  and  dignity  which  can  never  coexist  with 
the  selfish  preoccupations  of  vanity  or  interest.  This  was  the 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  33 


“common  sense”  in  which  Young  was  conspicuously  defi¬ 
cient  ;  and  it  was  partly  owing  to  this  deficiency  that  his 
genius,  waiting  to  be  determined  by  the  highest  prize,  flut¬ 
tered  uncertainly  from  effort  to  effort,  until,  when  he  was 
more  than  sixty,  it  suddenly  spread  its  broad  wing,  and 
soared  so  as  to  arrest  the  gaze  of  other  generations  besides 
his  own.  For  he  had  no  versatility  of  faculty  to  mislead 
him.  The  “Night  Thoughts”  only  differ  from  his  previous 
works  in  the  degree  and  not  in  the  kind  of  power  they  mani¬ 
fest.  Whether  he  writes  prose  or  poetry,  rhyme  or  blank 
verse,  dramas,  satires,  odes,  or  meditations,  we  see  everywhere 
the  same  Young, — the  same  narrow  circle  of  thoughts,  the 
same  love  of  abstractions,  the  same  telescopic  view  of  human 
things,  the  same  appetency  towards  antithetic  apothegm  and 
rhapsodic  climax.  The  passages  that  arrest  us  in  his  trage¬ 
dies  are  those  in  which  he  anticipates  some  fine  passage  in 
the  “Night  Thoughts,”  and  where  his  characters  are  only 
transparent  shadows,  through  which  we  see  the  bewigged 
embonpoint  of  the  didactic  poet,  excogitating  epigrams  or 
ecstatic  soliloquies  by  the  light  of  a  candle  fixed  in  a  skull. 
Thus  in  “  The  Revenge,”  Alonzo,  in  the  conflict  of  jealousy 
and  love  that  at  once  urges  and  forbids  him  to  murder  hU 
wife,  says,  — 

“This  vast  and  solid  earth,  that  blazing  sun, 

Those  skies,  through  which  it  rolls,  must  all  have  end 

What  then  is  man  ?  The  smallest  part  of  nothing. 

Day  buries  day  ;  month,  month ;  and  year,  the  year! 

Our  life  is  but  a  chain  of  many  deaths. 

Can  then  Death’s  self  be  feared  ?  Oor  life  much  rather : 

Life  is  the  desert ,  life  the  solitude  ; 

Death  joins  us  to  the  great  majority : 

'T  is  to  be  born  to  Plato  and  to  Caesar ; 

T  is  to  be  great  forever ; 

’T  is  pleasure,  ’t  is  ambition,  then,  to  die.” 

His  prose  writings  all  read  like  the  “Night  Thoughts,” 
either  diluted  into  prose,  or  not  yet  crystallized  into  poetry. 
For  example,  in  his  “  Thoughts  for  Age,”  he  says,  — 

VOL.  LX.  3 


34 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT, 


“  Though  we  stand  on  its  awful  brink,  such  our  leaden  bias  to  the 
world,  we  turn  our  faces  the  wrong  way;  we  are  still  looking  on  our 
old  acquaintance,  Time,  though  now  so  wasted  and  reduced,  that  we 
can  see  little  more  of  him  than  his  wings  and  his  scythe  :  our  age  en¬ 
larges  his  wings  to  our  imagination  ;  and  our  fear  of  death,  his  scythe ; 
as  Time  himself  grows  less.  His  consumption  is  deep ;  his  annihila¬ 
tion  is  at  hand.” 

This  is  a  dilution  of  the  magnificent  image :  — 

“  Time  in  advance  behind  him  hides  his  wings. 

And  seems  to  creep  decrepit  with  his  age. 

Behold  him  when  past  by  !  What  then  is  seen 
But  his  proud  pinions,  swifter  than  the  winds  ?  ” 

Again :  — 

“A  requesting  Omnipotence?  What  can  stun  and  confound  thy 
reason  more  ?  What  more  can  ravish  and  exalt  thy  heart  ?  It  cannot 
but  ravish  and  exalt ;  it  caunot  but  gloriously  disturb  and  perplex  thee, 
to  take  in  all  that  thought  suggests.  Thou  child  of  the  dust !  Thou 
speck  of  misery  and  sin  !  How  abject  thy  weakness,  how  great  is 
thy  power !  Thou  crawler  on  earth,  and  possible  (I  was  about  to  say) 
controller  of  the  skies  !  Weigh,  and  weigh  well,  the  wondrous  truths 
I  have  in  view:  which  cannot  be  weighed  too  much  ;  which  the  more 
they  are  weighed,  amaze  the  more ;  which  to  have  supposed,  before 
they  were  revealed,  would  have  been  as  great  madness,  and  to  have  pre¬ 
sumed  on  as  great  sin,  as  it  is  now  madness  and  sin  not  to  believe.” 

Even  in  his  Pindaric  odes,  in  which  he  made  the  most  vio¬ 
lent  efforts  against  nature,  he  is  still  neither  more  nor  less 
than  the  Young  of  the  “Last  Day,”  emptied  and  swept  of 
his  genius,  and  possessed  by  seven  demons  of  fustian  and 
bad  rhyme.  Even  here,  his  “Ercles’  Vein  ”  alternates  with 
his  moral  platitudes,  and  we  have  the  perpetual  text  of  the 
“  Night  Thoughts  :  ”  — 

“  Gold,  pleasure  buys ; 

But  pleasure  dies, 

For  soon  the  gross  fruition  cloya ; 

Though  raptures  court, 

The  sense  is  short : 

But  virtue  kindles  living  joys,  — 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  35 


“  Joys  felt  alone ! 

Joys  asked  of  none ! 

Which  Time’s  and  Fortune’s  arrows  mis* : 

Joys  that  subsist, 

Though  fates  resist, 

An  unprecarious,  endless  bliss ! 

“  Unhappy  they ! 

And  falsely  gay ! 

Who  bask  forever  in  success ; 

A  constant  feast 
Quite  palls  the  taste, 

And  long  enjoyment  is  distress 

In  the  “  Last  Day,”  again,  which  is  the  earliest  thing  he 
wrote,  we  have  an  anticipation  of  all  his  greatest  faults  and 
merits.  Conspicuous  among  the  faults  is  that  attempt  to  ex¬ 
alt  our  conceptions  of  Deity  by  vulgar  images  and  compari¬ 
sons,  which  is  so  offensive  in  the  later  “Night  Thoughts.” 
In  a  burst  of  prayer  and  homage  to  God,  called  forth  by  the 
contemplation  of  Christ  coming  to  Judgment,  he  asks,  “  Who 
brings  the  change  of  the  seasons  ?  ”  and  answers,  — 

"  Not  the  great  Ottoman,  or  Greater  Czar; 

Not  Europe’s  arbitress  of  peace  and  war !  ” 

Conceive  the  soul  in  its  most  solemn  moments,  assuring 
God  that  it  does  n’t  place  his  power  below  that  of  Louis 
Napoleon  or  Queen  Victoria  ! 

But  in  the  midst  of  uneasy  rhymes,  inappropriate  imagery, 
vaulting  sublimity  that  o’erleaps  itself,  and  vulgar  emotions, 
we  have  in  this  poem  an  occasional  flash  of  genius,  a  touch 
of  simple  grandeur,  which  promises  as  much  as  Young  evei 
achieved.  Describing  the  on-coming  of  the  dissolution  of  al) 
things,  he  says,  — 

"No  sun  in  radiant  glory  shines  on  high ; 

No  light  but  from  the  terrors  of  the  sky.” 

And  again,  speaking  of  great  armies,  — 

“  Whose  rear  lay  wrapt  in  night,  while  breaking  dawn 
Roused  the  broad  front,  and  called  the  battle  on.” 


35 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT, 


And  this  wail  of  the  lost  souls  is  fine :  — 

“  And  this  for  sin  ? 

Could  I  offend  if  I  had  never  been  ? 

But  still  increased  the  senseless,  happy  mas*, 

Flowed  in  the  stream,  or  shivered  in  the  grass? 

Father  of  mercies  !  Why  from  silent  earth 
Didst  thou  awake  and  curse  me  into  birth? 

Tear  me  from  quiet,  ravish  me  from  night, 

And  make  a  thankless  present  of  thy  light  ? 

Push  into  being  a  reverse  of  thee, 

And  animate  a  clod  with  misery  ?  ” 

But  it  is  seldom  in  Young’s  rhymed  poems  that  the  effect 
of  a  felicitous  thought  or  image  is  not  counteracted  by  our 
sense  of  the  constraint  he  suffered  from  the  necessities  of 
rhyme,  —  that  “  Gothic  demon,”  as  he  afterwards  called  it, 
“  which  modern  poetry  tasting,  became  mortal.”  In  relation 
to  his  own  power,  no  one  will  question  the  truth  of  his  dic¬ 
tum,  that  “  blank  verse  is  verse  unfallen,  uncurst ;  verse  re¬ 
claimed,  reinthroned  in  the  true  language  of  the  gods ;  who 
never  thundered  nor  suffered  their  Homer  to  thunder  in 
rhyme.”  His  want  of  mastery  in  rhyme  is  especially  a 
drawback  on  the  effects  of  his  Satires ;  for  epigrams  and 
witticisms  are  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the  intrusion  of  a 
superfluous  word,  or  to  an  inversion  which  implies  con¬ 
straint.  Here,  even  more  than  elsewhere,  the  art  that  con¬ 
ceals  art  is  an  absolute  requisite,  and  to  have  a  witticism 
presented  to  us  in  limping  or  cumbrous  rhythm  is  as  coun¬ 
teractive  to  any  electrifying  effect,  as  to  see  the  tentative 
grimaces  by  which  a  comedian  prepares  a  grotesque  counte¬ 
nance.  We  discern  the  process,  instead  of  being  startled  by 
the  result. 

This  is  one  reason  why  the  Satires,  read  seriatim,  have  a 
flatness  to  us,  which,  when  we  afterwards  read  picked  pas¬ 
sages,  we  are  inclined  to  disbelieve  in,  and  to  attribute  to 
some  deficiency  in  our  own  mood.  But  there  are  deeper  rea¬ 
sons  for  that  dissatisfaction.  Young  is  not  a  satirist  of  a 
high  order.  His  satire  has  neither  the  terrible  vigor,  the 
lacerating  energy,  of  genuine  indignation,  nor  the  humor 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  87 


whicli  owns  loving  fellowship  with  the  poor  human  nature  it 
laughs  at ;  nor  yet  the  personal  bitterness  which,  as  in  Pope’s 
characters  of  Sporus  and  Atticus,  ensures  those  living  touches 
by  virtue  of  which  the  individual  and  particular  in  Art  be¬ 
comes  the  universal  and  immortal.  Young  could  never 
describe  a  real,  complex  human  being  ;  but  what  he  could  do, 
with  eminent  success,  was  to  describe,  with  neat  and  finished 
point,  obvious  types  of  manners  rather  than  of  character,  — 
to  write  cold  and  clever  epigrams  on  personified  vices  and 
absurdities.  There  is  no  more  emotion  in  his  satire  than  if 
he  were  turning  witty  verses  on  a  waxen  image  of  Cupid,  or 
a  lady’s  glove.  He  has  none  of  those  felicitous  epithets,  none 
of  those  pregnant  lines,  by  which  Pope’s  Satires  have  enriched 
the  ordinary  speech  of  educated  men.  Young’s  wit  will  be 
found  in  almost  every  instance  to  consist  in  that  antithetic 
combination  of  ideas  which,  of  all  the  forms  of  wit,  is  most 
within  reach  of  clever  effort.  In  his  gravest  arguments,  as 
well  as  in  his  lightest  satire,  one  might  imagine  that  he  had 
set  himself  to  work  out  the  problem,  how  much  antithesis 
might  be  got  out  of  a  given  subject.  And  there  he  com¬ 
pletely  succeeds.  His  neatest  portraits  are  all  wrought  on 
this  plan.  Narcissus,  for  example,  who 

“  Omits  no  duty ;  nor  can  Envy  say 
He  missed,  these  many  years,  the  Church  or  Play : 

He  makes  no  noise  in  Parliament,  ’t  is  true; 

But  pays  his  debts,  and  visit  when ’t  is  due ; 

His  character  and  gloves  are  ever  clean, 

And  then  he  can  out-bow  the  bowing  Dean; 

A  smile  eternal  on  his  lip  he  wears, 

Which  equally  the  wise  and  worthless  share®. 

In  gay  fatigues,  this  most  undaunted  chief, 

•  Patient  of  idleness  beyond  belief, 

Most  charitably  lends  the  town  his  face 
For  ornament  in  every  public  place ; 

As  sure  as  cards  he  to  th’  assembly  comes, 

And  is  the  furniture  of  drawing-rooms : 

'  When  Ombre  calls,  his  hand  and  heart  are  free, 

And,  joined  to  two,  he  fails  not  — to  make  three; 

Narcissus  is  the  glory  of  his  race  ; 


38 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


For  who  does  nothing  with  a  better  grace  * 

To  deck  my  list  by  nature  were  designed 
Such  shining  expletives  of  human  kind, 

Who  want,  while  through  blank  life  they  dream  along. 

Sense  to  be  right  and  passion  to  be  wrong.” 

It  is  but  seldom  that  we  find  a  touch  of  that  easy  slyness 
which  gives  an  additional  zest  to  surprise  j  but  here  is  an 
instance :  — 

“  See  Tityrus,  with  merriment  possest, 

Is  burst  with  laughter  ere  he  hears  the  jest ; 

What  need  he  stay,  for  when  the  joke  is  o’er, 

His  teeth  will  be  no  whiter  than  before.” 

Like  Pope,  whom  he  imitated,  he  sets  out  with  a  psycho¬ 
logical  mistake  as  the  basis  of  his  satire,  attributing  all  forms 
of  folly  to  one  passion,  —  the  love  of  fame,  or  vanity,  —  a 
much  grosser  mistake,  indeed,  than  Pope’s  exaggeration  of 
the  extent  to  which  the  “ruling  passion”  determines  con¬ 
duct  in  the  individual.  Not  that  Young  is  consistent  in  his 
mistake.  He  sometimes  implies  no  more  than  what  is  the 
truth  —  that  the  love  of  fame  is  the  cause,  not  of  all  follies, 
but  of  many. 

Young’s  satires  on  women  are  superior  to  Pope’s,  which  is 
only  saying  that  they  are  superior  to  Pope’s  greatest  failure. 
We  can  more  frequently  pick  out  a  couplet  as  successful  than 
an  entire  sketch.  Of  the  too  emphatic  Syrena  he  says :  — 

“  Her  judgment  just,  her  sentence  is  too  strong; 

Because  she ’s  right,  she  ’a  ever  in  the  wrong.” 

Of  the  diplomatic  Julia :  — 

“  For  her  own  breakfast  she  ’ll  project  a  scheme, 

Nor  take  her  tea  without  a  stratagem.” 

Of  Lyce,  the  old  painted  coquette  :  — 

“  In  vain  the  cock  has  summoned  sprites  away ; 

She  walks  at  noon  and  blasts  the  bloom  of  day.” 

Of  the  nymph  who,  “  gratis,  clears  religious  mysteries ; 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  39 


“  ’T  is  hard,  too,  she  who  makes  no  use  but  ohat 
Of  her  religion,  should  be  barred  in  that.” 

The  description  of  the  literary  belle ,  Daphne,  well  pre¬ 
faces  that  of  Stella,  admired  by  Johnson:  — 

“  With  legs  tossed  high,  on  her  sophee  she  sits^ 

Vouchsafing  audience  to  contending  w'its : 

Of  each  performance  she ’s  the  final  test ; 

One  act  read  o’er,  she  prophesies  the  rest ; 

And  then,  pronouncing  with  decisive  air. 

Fully  convinces  all  the  town  —  she ’s  fair. 

Had  lonely  Daphne  Ilecatessa’s  face, 

How  would  her  elegance  of  taste  decrease ! 

Some  ladies’  judgment  in  their  features  lies. 

And  all  their  genius  sparkles  in  their  eyes. 

But  hold,  she  cries,  lampooner !  have  a  care ! 

Must  I  want  common  sense  because  I ’m  fair  ? 

Oh  no ;  see  Stella  :  her  eyes  shine  as  bright 
As  if  her  tongue  was  never  in  the  right ; 

And  yet  what  real  learning,  judgment,  fire  ! 

She  seems  inspired,  and  can  herself  inspire. 

How  then  (if  malice  ruled  not  all  the  fair) 

Could  Daphne  publish,  and  could  she  forbear  ?” 

After  all,  when  we  have  gone  through  Young’s  seven  Sa¬ 
tires,  we  seem  to  have  made  but  an  indifferent  meal.  They 
are  a  sort  of  fricassee,  with  some  little  solid  meat  in  them, 
and  yet  the  flavor  is  not  always  piquant.  It  is  curious  to 
find  him,  when  he  pauses  a  moment  from  his  satiric  sketch¬ 
ing,  recurring  to  his  old  platitudes :  — 

“  Can  gold  calm  passion,  or  make  reason  shine  1 
Can  we  dig  peace  or  wisdom  from  the  mine  ? 

Wisdom  to  gold  prefer  :  ”  — 

platitudes  which  he  seems  inevitably  to  fall  into,  for  the 
same  reason  that  some  men  are  constantly  asserting  their 
contempt  for  criticism  —  because  he  felt  the  opposite  so 
keenly. 

The  outburst  of  genius  in  the  earlier  books  of  the  “  Night 
Thoughts  ”  is  the  more  remarkable,  that,  in  the  interval  be¬ 
tween  them  and  the  Satires,  he  had  produced  nothing  but  his 


40 


ASSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


Pindaric  odes,  in  which  he  fell  far  below  the  level  of  his  pra 
vious  works.  Two  sources  of  this  sudden  strength  were  the 
freedom  of  blank  verse  and  the  presence  of  a  genuine  emo¬ 
tion.  Most  persons,  in  speaking  of  the  “Night  Thoughts,” 
have  in  their  minds  only  the  two  or  three  first  Nights  ;  the 
majority  of  readers  rarely  getting  beyond  these,  unless,  as 
Wilson  says,  they  “  have  but  few  books,  are  poor,  and  live  in 
the  country.”  And  in  these  earlier  Nights  there  is  enough 
genuine  sublimity  and  genuine  sadness  to  bribe  us  into  too 
favorable  a  judgment  of  them  as  a  whole.  Young  had  only 
a  very  few  things  to  say  or  sing,  —  such  as  that  life  is  vain, 
that  death  is  imminent,  that  man  is  immortal,  that  virtue  is 
wisdom,  that  friendship  is  sweet,  and  that  the  source  of  vir¬ 
tue  is  the  contemplation  of  death  and  immortality,  —  and 
even  in  his  two  first  Nights  he  had  said  almost  all  he  had  to 
say  in  his  finest  manner.  Through  these  first  outpourings  of 
“complaint”  we  feel  that  the  poet  is  really  sad,  that  the 
bird  is  singing  over  a  rifled  nest ;  and  we  bear  with  his 
morbid  picture  of  the  world  and  of  life,  as  the  Job-like  lament 
of  a  man  whom  “the  hand  of  God  hath  touched.”  Death 
has  carried  away  his  best-beloved,  and  that  “silent  land,” 
whither  they  are  gone,  has  more  reality  for  the  desolate  one 
than  this  world,  which  is  empty  of  their  love :  — 

“  This  is  the  desert,  this  the  solitude  ; 

How  populous,  how  vital,  is  the  grave !  ” 

Joy  died  with  the  loved  one :  — 

“  The  disenchanted  earth 

Lost  all  her  lustre.  Where  her  glittering  towers  1 
Her  golden  mountains,  where  ?  All  darkened  down 
To  naked  waste  ;  a  dreary  vale  of  tears  : 

The  great  magician ’s  dead  !  ” 

Under  the  pang  of  parting,  it  seems  to  the  bereaved  man 
as  if  love  were  only  a  nerve  to  suffer  with,  and  he  sickens  at 
the  thought  of  every  joy  of  which  he  must  one  day  say,  “It 
was.”  In  its  unreasoning  anguish,  the  soul  rushes  to  the 
idea  of  perpetuity  as  the  one  element  of  bliss :  — 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-  WORLDLINESS.  41 


"  O  ye  blest  scenes  of  permanent  delight ! 

Could  ye,  so  rich  in  rapture,  fear  an  end,  — 

That  ghastly  thought  would  drink  up  all  your  joy. 

And  quite  unparadise  the  realms  of  light.” 

In  a  man  under  the  immediate  pressure  of  a  great  sorrow, 
we  tolerate  morbid  exaggerations  ;  we  are  prepared  to  see 
him  turn  away  a  weary  eye  from  sunlight  and  flowers  and 
sweet  human  faces,  as  if  this  rich  and  glorious  life  had  no 
significance  but  as  a  preliminary  of  death  ;  we  do  not  criticise 
his  views,  we  compassionate  his  feelings.  And  so  it  is  with 
Young  in  these  earlier  Nights.  There  is  already  some  arti¬ 
ficiality  even  in  his  grief,  and  feeling  often  slides  into 
rhetoric ;  but  through  it  all  we  are  thrilled  with  the  unmis¬ 
takable  cry  of  pain,  which  makes  us  tolerant  of  egoism  and 
hyperbole :  — 

“  In  every  varied  posture,  place,  and  hour, 

How  widowed  every  thought  of  every  joy! 

Thought,  busy  thought !  too  busy  for  my  peace! 

Through  the  dark  postern  of  time  long  elapsed 
Led  softly,  by  the  stillness  of  the  night, — 

Led  like  a  murderer  (and  such  it  proves!) 

Strays  (wretched  rover!)  o’er  the  pleasing  past, — 

In  quest  of  wretchedness,  perversely  strays  ; 

And  finds  all  desert  now ;  and  meets  the  ghost* 

Of  my  departed  joys.” 

But  when  he  becomes  didactic,  rather  than  complaining,  — 
when  he  ceases  to  sing  his  sorrows,  and  begins  to  insist  on 
his  opinions,  —  when  that  distaste  for  life,  which  we  pity  as 
a  transient  feeling,  is  thrust  upon  us  as  a  theory,  we  become 
perfectly  cool  and  critical,  and  are  not  in  the  least  inclined 
to  be  indulgent  to  false  views  and  selfish  sentiments. 

Seeing  that  we  are  about  to  be  severe  on  Young’s  failings  and 
failures,  we  ought,  if  a  reviewer’s  space  were  elastic,  to  dwell 
also  on  his  merits,  —  on  the  startling  vigor  of  his  imagery,  on 
the  occasional  grandeur  of  his  thought,  on  the  piquant  force  of 
that  grave  satire  into  which  his  meditations  continually  run. 
But,  since  our  limits  are  rigorous,  we  must  content  ourselves 


42 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


with  the  less  agreeable  half  of  the  critic’s  duty ;  and  we  may  the 
rather  do  so,  because  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  anything  new 
of  Young  in  the  way  of  admiration,  while  we  think  there  are 
many  salutary  lessons  remaining  to  be  drawn  from  his  faults. 

One  of  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  Young  is  his 
radical  insincerity  as  a  poetic  artist.  This,  added  to  the  thin 
and  artificial  texture  of  his  wit,  is  the  true  explanation  of 
the  paradox  —  that  a  poet  who  is  often  inopportunely  witty 
has  the  opposite  vice  of  bombastic  absurdity.  The  source  of 
all  grandiloquence  is  the  want  of  taking  for  a  criterion  the 
true  qualities  of  the  object  described,  or  the  emotion  ex¬ 
pressed.  The  grandiloquent  man  is  never  bent  on  saying 
what  he  feels  or  what  he  sees,  but  on  producing  a  certain 
effect  on  his  audience ;  hence  he  may  float  away  into  utter 
inanity  without  meeting  any  criterion  to  arrest  him.  Here 
lies  the  distinction  between  grandiloquence  and  genuine 
fancy  or  bold  imaginativeness.  The  fantastic  or  the  boldly 
imaginative  poet  may  be  as  sincere  as  the  most  realistic  ;  he 
is  true  to  his  own  sensibilities  or  inward  vision,  and  in  his 
wildest  flights  he  never  breaks  loose  from  his  criterion  —  the 
truth  of  his  own  mental  state.  How,  this  disruption  of  lan¬ 
guage  from  genuine  thought  and  feeling  is  what  we  are  con¬ 
stantly  detecting  in  Young ;  and  his  insincerity  is  the  more 
likely  to  betray  him  into  absurdity,  because  he  habitually 
treats  of  abstractions,  and  not  of  concrete  objects  or  specific 
emotions.  He  descants  perpetually  on  virtue,  religion,  “  the 
good  man,”  life,  death,  immortality,  eternity  —  subjects  which 
are  apt  to  give  a  factitious  grandeur  to  empty  wordiness. 
When  a  poet  floats  in  the  empyrean,  and  only  takes  a  bird’s- 
eye  view  of  the  earth,  some  people  accept  the  mere  fact  of 
his  soaring  for  sublimity,  and  mistake  his  dim  vision  of  eartl 
for  proximity  to  heaven.  Thus,  — 

“  His  hand  the  good  man  fixes  on  the  skies, 

And  bids  earth  roll,  nor  feels  her  idle  whirl,” 

may,  perhaps,  pass  for  sublime  with  some  readers.  But 
pause  a  moment  to  realize  the  image,  and  the  monstrous  ab- 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTIIER-WORLDLINESS.  43 


surdity  of  a  man’s  grasping  the  skies,  and  hanging  habitually 
suspended  there,  while  he  contemptuously  bids  the  earth 
roll,  warns  you  that  no  genuine  feeling  could  have  suggested 
so  unnatural  a  conception. 

Again,  — 

“  See  the  man  immortal :  him,  I  mean, 

Who  lives  as  such  ;  whose  heart,  full  bent  on  Heaven, 

Leans  all  that  way,  his  bias  to  the  stars.” 

This  is  worse  than  the  previous  example :  for  you  can  at 
least  form  some  imperfect  conception  of  a  man  hanging  from 
the  skies,  though  the  position  strikes  you  as  uncomfortable, 
and  of  no  particular  use ;  but  you  are  utterly  unable  to  imag¬ 
ine  how  his  heart  can  lean  towards  the  stars.  Examples  of 
such  vicious  imagery,  resulting  from  .insincerity,  may  be 
found,  perhaps,  in  almost  every  page  of  the  “Night  Thoughts.” 
But  simple  assertions  or  aspirations,  undisguised  by  imagery, 
are  often  equally  false.  No  writer  whose  rhetoric  was  checked 
by  the  slightest  truthful  intentions,  could  have  said,  — 

“  An  eye  of  awe  and  wonder  let  me  roll. 

And  roll  forever.” 

Abstracting  the  more  poetical  associations  with  the  eye,  this 
is  hardly  less  absurd  than  if  he  had  wished  to  stand  forever 
with  his  mouth  open. 

Again,  — 

“  Far  beneath 

A  soul  immortal  is  a  mortal  joy.” 

Happily  for  human  nature,  we  are  sure  no  man  really  believes 
that.  Which  of  us  has  the  impiety  not  to  feel  that  our  souls 
are  only  too  narrow  for  the  joy  of  looking  into  the  trusting 
eyes  of  our  children,  of  reposing  on  the  love  of  a  husband  or 
a  wife,  —  nay,  of  listening  to  the  divine  voice  of  music,  or 
watching  the  calm  brightness  of  autumnal  afternoons  ?  But 
Young  could  utter  this  falsity  without  detecting  it,  because, 
when  he  spoke  of  “mortal  joys,”  he  rarely  had  in  his  mind 
any  object  to  which  he  could  attach  sacredness.  He  was 


44 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE 

thinking  of  bishoprics  and  benefices,  of  smiling  monarch*, 
patronizing  prime-ministers,  and  a  “  much  indebted  muse.” 
Of  anything  between  these  and  eternal  bliss,  he  was  but  rarely 
and  moderately  conscious.  Often,  indeed,  he  sinks  very 
much  below  even  the  bishopric,  and  seems  to  have  no  notion 
of  earthly  pleasure,  but  such  as  breathes  gaslight  and  the 
fumes  of  wine.  His  picture  of  life  is  precisely  such  as  you 
would  expect  from  a  man  who  has  risen  from  his  bed  at  two 
o’clock  in  the  afternoon  with  a  headache,  and  a  dim  remem¬ 
brance  that  he  has  added  to  his  “  debts  of  honor :  ”  — 

“  What  wretched  repetition  cloys  us  here ! 

What  periodic  potions  for  the  sick, 

Distempered  bodies,  and  distempered  minds  ?  " 

And  then  he  flies  pff  to  his  usual  antithesis :  — 

“  In  an  eternity  what  scenes  shall  strike ! 

Adventures  thicken,  novelties  surprise !  ” 

“  Earth  ”  means  lords  and  levees,  duchesses  and  Delilahs. 
South-Sea  dreams  and  illegal  percentage ;  and  the  only  things 
distinctly  preferable  to  these,  are  eternity  and  the  stars. 
Deprive  Young  of  this  antithesis,  and  more  than  half  his  elo¬ 
quence  would  be  shrivelled  up.  Place  him  on  a  breezy  com¬ 
mon,  where  the  furze  is  in  its  golden  bloom,  where  children 
are  playing,  and  horses  are  standing  in  the  sunshine  with 
fondling  necks,  and  he  would  have  nothing  to  say.  Here  are 
neither  depths  of  guilt  nor  heights  of  glory ;  and  we  doubt 
whether  in  such  a  scene  he  would  be  able  to  pay  his  usual 
compliment  to  the  Creator :  — 

“  Where’er  I  turn,  what  claim  on  all  applause !  ” 

It  is  true  that  he  sometimes  —  not  often  —  speaks  of  virtue 
as  capable  of  sweetening  life,  as  well  as  of  taking  the  sting 
from  death  and  winning  heaven ;  and,  lest  we  should  be 
guilty  of  any  unfairness  to  him,  we  will  quote  the  two  pas¬ 
sages  which  convey  this  sentiment  the  most  explicitly.  In 
the  one,  he  gives  Lorenzo  this  excellent  recipe  for  obtain¬ 
ing  cheerfulness :  — 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  45 


“  Go,  fix  some  weighty  truth ; 

Chain  down  some  passion;  do  some  generous  good; 

Teach  Ignorance  to  see,  or  Grief  to  smile ; 

Correct  thy  friend;  befriend  thy  greatest  foe; 

Or,  with  warm  heart,  and  confidence  divine. 

Spring  up,  and  lay  strong  hold  on  Him  who  made  thee." 

The  other  passage  is  vague,  but  beautiful,  and  its  music 
has  murmured  in  our  minds  for  many  years  :  — 

“  The  cuckoo  seasons  sing 
The  same  dull  note  to  such  as  nothing  prize 
But  what  those  seasons  from  the  teeming  earth 
To  doting  sense  indulge.  But  nobler  minds. 

Which  relish  fruit  unripened  by  the  sun, 

Make  their  days  various ;  various  as  the  dyes 
On  the  dove’s  neck,  which  wanton  in  his  rays. 

On  minds  of  dove-like  innocence  possessed, 

On  lightened  minds  that  bask  in  Virtue’s  heam». 

Nothing  hangs  tedious,  nothing  old  revolves 
In  that  for  which  they  long,  for  which  they  live. 

Their  glorious  efforts,  winged  with  heavenly  hope#. 

Each  rising  morning  sees  still  higher  rise; 

Each  bounteous  dawn  its  novelty  presents 
To  worth  maturing,  new  strength,  lustre,  fame; 

While  Nature’s  circle,  like  a  chariot  wheel. 

Rolling  beneath  their  elevated  aims, 

Makes  their  fair  prospect  fairer  every  hour; 

Advancing  virtue  in  a  line  to  bliss.” 

Even  here,  where  he  is  in  his  most  amiable  mood,  you  see 
at  what  a  telescopic  distance  he  stands  from  mother  Earth 
and  simple  human  joys,  —  “  Nature’s  'circle  rolls  beneath.” 
Indeed,  we  remember  no  mind  in  poetic  literature  that  seems 
to  have  absorbed  less  of  the  beauty  and  the  healthy  breath  of 
the  common  landscape  than  Young’s.  His  images,  often 
grand  and  finely  presented,  witness  that  sublimely  sudden 
leap  of  thought,  — 

“  Embryos  we  must  he  till  we  hurst  the  shell, 

Yon  ambient  azure  shell,  and  spring  to  life,”  — 

lie  almost  entirely  within  that  circle  of  observation  which 
would  be  familiar  to  a  man  who  lived  in  town,  hung  about 


46 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


the  theatres,  read  the  newspaper,  and  went  home  olten  by 
moon  and  star  light. 

There  is  no  natural  object  nearer  than  the  moon  that  seems 
to  have  any  strong  attraction  for  him ;  and  even  to  the  moon 
he  chiefly  appeals  for  patronage,  and  “  pays  his  court  ”  to  her. 
It  is  reckoned  among  the  many  deficiencies  of  Lorenzo,  that 
he  “never  asked  the  moon  one  question”  —  an  omission 
which  Young  thinks  eminently  unbecoming  a  rational  being. 
He  describes  nothing  so  well  as  a  comet,  and  is  tempted  to 
linger  with  fond  detail  over  nothing  more  familiar  than  the 
Day  of  Judgment  and  an  imaginary  journey  among  the  stars. 
Once  on  Saturn’s  ring,  he  feels  at  home,  and  his  language 
becomes  quite  easy  :  — 


“  What  behold  I  now  ? 

A  wilderness  of  wonders  burning  round. 

Where  larger  suns  inhabit  higher  spheres  j 
Perhaps  the  villas  of  descending  gods  !  ” 

It  is  like  a  sudden  relief  from  a  strained  posture  when,  in 
the  “  Night  Thoughts,”  we  come  on  any  allusion  that  carries 
us  to  the  lanes,  woods,  or  fields.  Such  allusions  are  amazingly 
rare,  and  we  could  almost  count  them  on  a  single  hand.  That 
we  may  do  him  no  injustice,  we  will  quote  the  three  best :  — 

“  Like  blossomed  trees  o'erturned  by  vernal  storm. 

Lovely  in  death  the  beauteous  ruin  lay. 

In  the  same  brook  none  ever  bathed  him  twice : 

To  the  same  life  none  ever  twice  awoke. 

We  call  the  brook  the  same  —  the  same  we  think 
Our  life,  though  still  more  rapid  in  its  flow ; 

Nor  mark  the  much  irrevocably  lapsed 
And  mingled  with  the  sea. 

•  •  •  •  • 

The  crown  of  manhood  is  a  winter  joy  ; 

An  evergreen  that  stands  the  northern  blast. 

And  blossoms  in  the  rigor  of  our  fate.” 

The  adherence  to  abstractions,  or  to  the  personification  of 
abstractions,  is  closely  allied  in  Young  to  the  want  of  genuine 


VVORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  4 V 


emotion.  He  sees  Virtue  sitting  on  a  mount  serene,  far  above 
the  mists  and  storms  of  earth  ;  he  sees  Religion  coming  down 
from  the  skies,  with  this  world  in  her  left  hand  and  the  other 
world  in  her  right ;  but  we  never  find  him  dwelling  on  virtue 
or  religion  as  it  really  exists  —  in  the  emotions  of  a  man 
dressed  in  an  ordinary  coat,  and  seated  by  his  fireside  of  an 
evening,  with  his  hand  resting  on  the  head  of  his  little 
daughter,  in  courageous  effort  for  unselfish  ends,  in  the  in¬ 
ternal  triumph  of  justice  and  pity  over  personal  resentment, 
in  all  the  sublime  self-renunciation  and  sweet  charities  which 
are  found  in  the  details  of  ordinary  life.  Now  emotion 
links  itself  with  particulars,  and  only  in  a  faint  and  second¬ 
ary  manner  with  abstractions.  An  orator  may  discourse 
very  eloquently  on  injustice  in  general,  and  leave  his  au¬ 
dience  cold ;  but  let  him  state  a  special  case  of  oppression, 
and  every  heart  will  throb.  The  most  untheoretic  persons 
are  aware  of  this  relation  between  true  emotion  and  particular 
facts,  as  opposed  to  general  terms,  and  implicitly  recognize 
it  in  the  repulsion  they  feel  towards  any  one  who  professes 
strong  feeling  about  abstractions,  —  in  the  inter jectional 
“  humbug !  ”  which  immediately  rises  to  their  lips.  Wher¬ 
ever  abstractions  appear  to  excite  strong  emotion,  this  occurs 
in  men  of  active  intellect  and  imagination,  in  whom  the  ab¬ 
stract  term  rapidly  and  vividly  calls  up  the  particulars  it 
represents,  these  particulars  being  the  true  source  of  the 
emotion ;  and  such  men,  if  they  wished  to  express  their  feel¬ 
ing,  wrould  be  infallibly  prompted  to  the  presentation  of 
details.  Strong  emotion  can  no  more  be  directed  to  generali¬ 
ties  apart  from  particulars,  than  skill  in  figures  can  be  di¬ 
rected  to  arithmetic  apart  from  numbers.  Generalities  are 
the  refuge  at  once  of  deficient  intellectual  activity  and  de¬ 
ficient  feeling. 

If  we  except  the  passages  in  “  Philander,”  “  Narcissa,”  and 
“  Lucia,”  there  is  hardly  a  trace  of  human  sympathy,  of  self- 
forgetfulness  in  the  joy  or  sorrow  of  a  fellow-being,  through¬ 
out  this  long  poem,  wrhich  professes  to  treat  the  various 
phases  of  man’s  destiny.  And  even  in  the  “Narcissa”  Night, 


48 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


Young  repels  us  by  the  low  moral  tone  of  his  exaggerated 
lament.  This  married  step-daughter  died  at  Lyons,  and, 
being  a  Protestant,  was  denied  burial,  so  that  her  friends  had 
to  bury  her  in  secret,  —  one  of  the  many  miserable  results 
of  superstition,  but  not  a  fact  to  throw  an  educated,  still  less 
a  Christian  man,  into  a  fury  of  hatred  and  vengeance,  in  con¬ 
templating  it  after  the  lapse  of  five  years.  Young,  however, 
takes  great  pains  to  simulate  a  bad  feeling :  — 

“  Of  grief 

And  indignation  rival  bursts  I  poured, 

Half  execration  miugled  with  my  prayer; 

Kindled  at  man,  while  I  his  God  adored  ; 

Sore  grudged  the  savage  land  her  sacred  dust ; 

Stamped  the  cursed  soil;  and  with  humanity 
(Denied  Narcissa)  wished  them  all  a  grave.” 

The  odiously  bad  taste  of  this  last  clause  makes  us  hope 
that  it  is  simply  a  platitude,  and  not  intended  as  witticism, 
until  he  removes  the  possibility  of  this  favorable  doubt  by 
immediately  asking,  “  Flows  my  resentment  into  guilt  ?  ” 

When,  by  an  afterthought,  he  attempts  something  like 
sympathy,  he  only  betrays  more  clearly  his  want  of  it.  Thus, 
in  the  first  Night,  when  he  turns  from  his  private  griefs  to 
depict  earth  as  a  hideous  abode  of  misery  for  all  mankind, 
and  asks,  — 

“  What  then  am  I,  who  sorrow  for  myself  1  ” 

I; 

he  falls  at  once  into  calculating  the  benefit  of  sorrowing  for 
others : — 

“  More  generous  sorrow,  while  it  sinks,  exalts ; 

And  conscious  virtue  mitigates  the  pang. 

Nor  virtue,  more  than  prudence,  bids  me  give 
Swollen  thought  a  second  channel.” 

This  remarkable  negation  of  sympathy  is  in  perfect  con¬ 
sistency  with  Young’s  theory  of  ethics  :  — 

“  Virtue  is  a  crime, 

A  crime  to  reason,  if  it  costs  us  pain 
Unpaid.” 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  49 


If  there  is  no  immortality  for  man,  — 

11  Sense !  take  the  rein  ;  blind  Passion,  drive  us  on ; 

And  Ignorance  !  befriend  us  on  our  way. 

\es,  give  the  Pulse  full  empire  ;  live  the  Brute, 

Since  as  the  brute  we  die.  The  sum  of  maji. 

Of  godlike  man,  to  revel  and  to  rot. 

•  •  •  •  . 

If  this  life’s  gain  invites  him  to  the  deed, 

Why  not  his  country  sold,  his  father  slain  t 
#  • 

Ambition,  avarice,  by  the  wise  disdained, 

Is  perfect  wisdom,  while  mankind  are  fool*. 

And  think  a  turf  or  tombstone  covers  all. 

•  •  •  « 

Die  for  thy  country,  thou  romantic  fool  1 
Seize,  seize  the  plank  thyself,  and  let  her  sink. 

•  •  •  •  • 

As  in  the  dying  parent  dies  the  child, 

Virtue  with  Immortality  expires. 

Who  tells  me  he  denies  his  soul  immortal, 

Whate’er  his  boast,  has  told  me  he ’s  a  knave. 

His  duty  ’t  is  to  love  himself  alone  ; 

Nor  care  though  mankind  perish,  if  he  smiles’* 

We  can  imagine  the  man  who  “  denies  his  soul  immortal,” 
replying:  “It  is  quite  possible  that  you  would  be  a  knave, 
and  love  yourself  alone,  if  it  were  not  for  your  belief  in  im¬ 
mortality  ;  but  you  are  not  to  force  upon  me  what  would 
result  from  your  own  utter  want  of  moral  emotion.  I  am 
just  and  honest,  not  because  I  expect  to  live  in  another  world, 
but  because,  having  felt  the  pain  of  injustice  and  dishonesty 
towards  myself,  I  have  a  fellow-feeling  with  other  men,  who 
would  suffer  the  same  pain  if  I  were  unjust  or  dishonest 
towards  them.  Why  should  I  give  my  neighbor  short  weight 
in  this  world,  because  there  is  not  another  world  in  which  I 
should  have  nothing  to  weigh  out  to  him  ?  I  am  honest, 
because  I  don’t  like  to  inflict  evil  on  others  in  this  life,  not 
because  I ’m  afraid  of  evil  to  myself  in  another.  The  fact  is, 
I  do  not  love  myself  alone,  whatever  logical  necessity  there 
may  be  for  that  in  your  mind.  I  have  a  tender  love  for  my 

4 


50 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT 


wife  and  children  and  friends,  and  through  that  love  1  sym¬ 
pathize  with  like  affections  in  other  men.  It  is  a  pang  to  me  to 
witness  the  sufferings  of  a  fellow-being,  and  I  feel  his  suffer¬ 
ing  the  more  acutely  because  he  is  mortal ,  —  because  his  life 
is  so  short,  and  I  would  have  it,  if  possible,  filled  with  hap¬ 
piness  and  not  misery.  Through  my  union  and  fellowship 
with  the  men  and  women  I  have  seen,  I  feel  a  like,  though  a 
fainter,  sympathy  with  those  I  have  not  seen  ;  and  I  am  able 
so  to  live  in  imagination  with  the  generations  to  come,  that 
their  good  is  not  alien  to  me,  and  is  a  stimulus  to  me  to  labor 
for  ends  which  may  not  benefit  myself,  but  will  benefit  them. 
It  is  possible  that  you  may  prefer  to  live  the  brute,  to  sell 
your  country,  or  to  slay  your  father,  if  you  were  not  afraid  of 
some  disagreeable  consequences  from  the  criminal  laws  of  an¬ 
other  world ;  but  even  if  I  could  conceive  no  motive  but  my  own 
worldly  interest,  or  the  gratification  of  my  animal  desire,  I 
have  not  observed  that  beastliness,  treachery,  and  parricide 
are  the  direct  way  to  happiness  and  comfort  on  earth.  And  I 
should  say  that,  if  you  feel  no  motive  to  common  morality, 
but  your  fear  of  a  criminal  bar  in  heaven,  you  are  decidedly 
a  man  for  the  police  on  earth  to  keep  their  eye  upon,  since  it 
is  matter  of  world-old  experience  that  fear  of  distant  conse¬ 
quences  is  a  very  insufficient  barrier  against  the  rush  of  im¬ 
mediate  desire.  Fear  of  consequences  is  only  one  form  of 
egoism,  which  will  hardly  stand  against  half-a-dozen  other 
forms  of  egoism  bearing  down  upon  it.  And  in  opposition  to 
your  theory  that  a  belief  in  immortality  is  the  only  source  of 
virtue,  I  maintain  that,  so  far  as  moral  action  is  dependent 
on  that  belief,  so  far  the  emotion  which  prompts  it  is  not 
tndy  moral,  —  is  still  in  the  stage  of  egoism,  and  has  not  yet 
attained  the  higher  development  of  sympathy.  In  proportion 
as  a  man  would  care  less  for  the  rights  and  welfare  of  his 
fellow  if  he  did  not  believe  in  a  future  life,  in  that  proportion 
is  he  wanting  in  the  genuine  feelings  of  justice  and  benevo¬ 
lence  ;  as  the  musician  who  would  care  less  to  play  a  sonata 
of  Beethoven  finely  in  solitude  than  in  public,  where  he  was 
to  be  paid  for  it,  is  wanting  in  genuine  enthusiasm  for  music.” 


) 


WORLDLLNESS  AND  OTHER- WORLDLINESS.  51 


Thus  far  might  answer  the  man  who  “  denies  himself  im¬ 
mortal  ;  ”  and  —  allowing  for  that  deficient  recognition  of  the 
finer  and  more  indirect  influences  exercised  by  the  idea  of 
immortality  which  might  be  expected  from  one  who  took  up 
a  dogmatic  position  on  such  a  subject  — we  think  he  would 
have  given  a  sufficient  reply  to  Young,  and  other  theological 
advocates  who,  like  him,  pique  themselves  on  the  loftiness  of 
their  doctrine  when  they  maintain  that  “  Virtue  with  Im¬ 
mortality  expires.”  We  may  admit,  indeed,  that  if  the  better 
part  of  virtue  consists,  as  Young  appears  to  think,  in  con¬ 
tempt  for  mortal  joys,  in  “  meditation  of  our  own  decease,” 
and  in  “  applause  ”  of  God  in  the  style  of  a  congratulatory 
address  to  her  Majesty,  —  all  which  has  small  relation  to  the 
well-being  of  mankind  on  this  earth,  —  the  motive  to  it  must 
be  gathered  from  something  that  lies  quite  outside  the  sphere 
of  human  sympathy.  But  for  certain  other  elements  of 
virtue,  which  are  of  more  obvious  importance  to  untheological 
minds,  —  a  delicate  sense  of  our  neighbor’s  rights,  an  active 
participation  in  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  our  fellow-men,  a 
magnanimous  acceptance  of  privation  or  suffering  for  our¬ 
selves  when  it  is  the  condition  of  good  to  others,  in  a  word, 
the  extension  and  intensification  of  our  sympathetic  nature,  — 
we  think  it  of  some  importance  to  contend,  that  they  have  no 
more  direct  relation  to  the  belief  in  a  future  state  than  the 
interchange  of  gases  in  the  lungs  has  to  the  plurality  of 
worlds.  Nay,  to  us  it  is  conceivable  that  in  some  minds  the 
deep  pathos  lying  in  the  thought  of  human  mortality  —  that 
we  are  here  for  a  little  while  and  then  vanish  away,  that  this 
earthly  life  is  all  that  is  given  to  our  loved  ones  and  to  our 
many  suffering  fellow-men  —  lies  nearer  the  fountains  of 
moral  emotion  than  the  conception  of  extended  existence. 
And  surely  it  ought  to  be  a  welcome  fact,  if  the  thought  of 
mortality,  as  well  as  of  immortality,  be  favorable  to  virtue. 
Do  writers  of  sermons  and  religious  novels  prefer  that  men 
should  be  vicious  in  order  that  there  may  be  a  more  evident 
political  and  social  necessity  for  printed  sermons  and  clerical 
fictions  ?  Because  learned  gentlemen  are  theological,  are  we 


52 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


to  have  no  more  simple  honesty  and  good-will  ?  We  can 
imagine  that  the  proprietors  of  a  patent  water-supply  have  a 
dread  of  common  springs  ;  but,  for  our  own  part,  we  think 
there  cannot  be  too  great  a  security  against  a  lack  of  fresh 
water  or  of  pure  morality.  To  us  it  is  a  matter  of  unmixed 
rejoicing  that  this  latter  necessary  of  healthful  life  is  in¬ 
dependent  of  theological  ink,  and  that  its  evolution  is  ensured 
in  the  interaction  of  human  souls,  as  certainly  as  the  evolution 
of  science  or  of  art,  with  which,  indeed,  it  is  but  a  twin  ray, 
melting  into  them  with  undefinable  limits. 

To  return  to  Young.  We  can  often  detect  a  man’s  deficien¬ 
cies  in  what  he  admires,  more  clearly  than  in  what  he  con¬ 
temns, —  in  the  sentiments  he  presents  as  laudable,  rather 
than  in  those  he  decries.  And  in  Young’s  notion  of  what  is 
lofty  he  casts  a  shadow  by  which  we  can  measure  him  with¬ 
out  further  trouble.  For  example,  in  arguing  for  human 
immortality,  he  says:  — 

“  First,  what  is  true  ambition ?  The  pursuit 
Of  glory  nothing  less  than  man  can  share. 

•  •  •  •  • 

The  Visible  and  Present  are  for  brutes, 

A  slender  portion,  and  a  narrow  bound ! 

These  Reason,  with  an  energy  divine, 

O’erleaps,  and  claims  the  Future  and  Unseen,— 

The  vast  Unseen,  the  Future  fathomless  ! 

When  the  great  soul  buoys  up  to  this  high  point, 

Leaving  gross  Nature’s  sediments  below, 

Then,  and  then  only,  Adam’s  offspring  quits 
The  sage  and  hero  of  the  fields  and  woods, 

Asserts  his  rank,  and  rises  into  man.” 

So,  then,  if  it  were  certified  that,  as  some  benevolent  minds 
have  tried  to  infer,  our  dumb  fellow-creatures  would  share  a 
future  existence,  in  which  it  is  to  be  hoped  we  should  neither 
beat,  starve,  nor  maim  them,  our  ambition  for  a  future  life 
would  cease  to  be  “  lofty !  ”  This  is  a  notion  of  loftiness 
which  may  pair  off  with  Dr.  Whewell’s  celebrated  observation, 
that  Bentham’s  moral  theory  is  low,  because  it  includes  jus¬ 
tice  and  mercy  to  brutes. 


worldlinejss  and  other  wokldliness.  53 


But,  for  a  reflection  of  Young’s  moral  personality  on  a 
colossal  scale,  we  must  turn  to  those  passages  where  his 
rhetoric  is  at  its  utmost  stretch  of  inflation  —  where  he  ad¬ 
dresses  the  Deity,  discourses  of  the  divine  operations,  or  de¬ 
scribes  the  Last  Judgment.  As  a  compound  of  vulgar  pomp, 
crawling  adulation,  and  hard  selfishness,  presented  under  the 
guise  of  piety,  there  are  few  things  in  literature  to  surpass 
the  Ninth  Night,  entitled  “Consolation,”  especially  in  the 
pages  where  he  describes  the  Last  Judgment,  —  a  subject 
to  which,  with  naive  self-betrayal,  he  applies  phraseology 
favored  by  the  exuberant  penny-a-liner.  Thus,  when  God 
descends,  and  the  groans  of  hell  are  opposed  by  “  shouts  of 
joy,”  —  much  as  cheers  and  groans  contend  at  a  public  meet¬ 
ing  where  the  resolutions  are  not  passed  unanimously,  —  the 
poet  completes  his  climax  in  this  way:  — 

"Hence,  in  one  peal  of  loud,  eternal  praise, 

The  charmed  spectators  thunder  their  applause.” 

In  the  same  taste,  he  sings :  — 

“  Eternity,  the  various  sentence  past. 

Assigns  the  severed  throng  distinct  abodes, 

Sulphureous  or  ambrosial” 

Exquisite  delicacy  of  indication !  He  is  too  nice  to  be 
specific  as  to  the  interior  of  the  “  sulphureous  ”  abode ;  but 
when  once  half  the  human  race  are  shut  up  there,  hear  how 
he  enjoys  turning  the  key  on  them  !  — 

“  What  ensues  ? 

The  deed  predominant,  the  deed  of  deeds ! 

Which  makes  a  hell  of  hell,  a  heaven  of  heaven  l 
The  goddess,  with  determined  aspect,  turns 
Her  adamantine  key’s  enormous  size 
Through  destiny’s  inextricable  wards, 

Deep  driving  every  bolt  on  both  their  fates. 

Then,  from  the  crystal  battlements  of  heaven, 

Down,  down  she  hurls  it  through  the  dark  profoond, 

Ten  thousand,  thousand  fathom  ;  there  to  rust 
And  ne’er  unlock  her  resolution  more. 

The  deep  resounds ;  and  hell,  through  all  her  glooiafc 
Returns,  in  gToans,  the  melancholy  roar.” 


54 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


This  is  one  of  the  blessings  for  which  Dr.  Young  thanks 
God  “most :  ”  — 


“For  all  I  bless  thee,  most,  for  the  severe ; 

Her  deatli  —  my  own  at  hand  —  the  fiery  gulf, 

That  flaming  bound  of  wrath  omnipotent  1 
It  thunders  ;  but  it  thunders  to  preserve; 

. its  wholesome  dread 

Averts  the  dreaded  pain  ;  its  hideous  groans 
Join  heaven’s  sweet  Hallelujahs  in  thy  praise, 

Great  Source  of  good  alone  !  How  kind  in  all ! 

In  vengeance  kind !  Pain,  Death,  Gehenna,  save  ”... 

i.  e.,  save  me,  Dr.  Young;  who,  in  return  for  that  favor,  promise 
to  give  my  divine  patron  the  monopoly  of  that  exuberance  in 
laudatory  epithet,  of  which  specimens  may  be  seen  at  any 
moment  in  a  large  number  of  dedications  and  odes  to  kings, 
queens,  prime-ministers,  and  other  persons  of  distinction. 
That,  in  Young’s  conception,  is  what  God  delights  in.  His 
crowning  aim  in  the  drama  of  the  ages  is  to  vindicate  his 
own  renown.  The  God  of  the  “Night  Thoughts”  is  simply 
Young  himself,  “writ  large,”  —  a  didactic  poet,  who  “lec¬ 
tures  ”  mankind  in  the  antithetic  hyperbole  of  mortal  and 
immortal  joys,  earth  and  the  stars,  hell  and  heaven,  and  ex¬ 
pects  the  tribute  of  inexhaustible  “  applause.”  Young  has  no 
conception  of  religion  as  anything  else  than  egoism  turned 
heavenward ;  and  he  does  not  merely  imply  this,  he  insists  on 
it.  Religion,  he  tells  us,  in  argumentative  passages  too  long 
to  quote,  is  “ambition,  pleasure,  and  the  love  of  gain,”  di¬ 
rected  towards  the  joys  of  the  future  life  instead  of  the 
present.  And  his  ethics  correspond  to  his  religion.  He 
vacillates,  indeed,  in  his  ethical  theory,  and  shifts  his  position 
in  order  to  suit  his  immediate  purpose  in  argument ;  but  he 
never  changes  his  level  so  as  to  see  beyond  the  horizon  of 
mere  selfishness.  Sometimes  he  insists,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  the  belief  in  a  future  life  is  the  only  basis  of  morality ; 
but  elsewhere  he  tells  us  — 

“  In  self-applause  is  virtue’s  golden  prize.” 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER- W ORLDLINESS.  55 


Virtue,  with  Young,  must  always  squint,  —  must  never  look 
straight  towards  the  immediate  object  of  its  emotion  and 
effort.  Thus,  if  a  man  risks  perishing  in  the  snow  himself, 
rather  than  forsake  a  weaker  comrade,  he  must  either  do  this 
because  his  hopes  and  fears  are  directed  to  another  world,  or 
because  he  desires  to  applaud  himself  afterwards !  Young, 
if  we  may  believe  him,  would  despise  the  action  as  folly 
unless  it  had  these  motives.  Let  us  hope  he  was  not  so  bad 
as  he  pretended  to  be !  The  tides  of  the  divine  life  in  man 
move  under  the  thickest  ice  of  theory. 

Another  indication  of  Young’s  deficiency  in  moral  —  i.  e.}  in 
sympathetic  —  emotion,  is  his  unintermitting  habit  of  peda¬ 
gogic  moralizing.  On  its  theoretic  and  perceptive  side,  moral¬ 
ity  touches  science  ;  on  its  emotional  side,  art.  Now,  the 
products  of  art  are  great  in  proportion  as  they  result  from  that 
immediate  prompting  of  innate  power  which  we  call  Genius, 
and  not  from  labored  obedience  to  a  theory  or  rule ;  and 
the  presence  of  genius  or  innate  prompting  is  directly  op¬ 
posed  to  the  perpetual  consciousness  of  a  rule.  The  action  of 
faculty  is  imperious,  and  excludes  the  reflection  why  it  should 
act.  In  the  same  way,  in  proportion  as  morality  is  emotional, 
i.  has  affinity  with  art,  it  will  exhibit  itself  in  direct 
sympathetic  feeling  and  action,  and  not  as  the  recognition 
of  a  rule.  Love  does  not  say,  “  I  ought  to  love,”  —  it  loves. 
Pity  does  not  say,  “It  is  right  to  be  pitiful,”  —  it  pities. 
Justice  does  not  say,  “I  am  bound  to  be  just,”  —  it  feels 
justly.  It  is  only  where  moral  emotion  is  comparatively 
weak  that  the  contemplation  of  a  rule  or  theory  habitually 
mingles  with  its  action ;  and  in  accordance  with  this,  we 
think  experience,  both  in  literature  and  life,  has  shown 
that  the  minds  which  are  pre-eminently  didactic  —  which  in¬ 
sist  on  a  lesson,  and  despise  everything  that  will  not  convey 
a  moral  —  are  deficient  in  sympathetic  emotion.  A  certain 
poet  is  recorded  to  have  said,  that  he  “  wished  everything  of 
his  burnt  that  did  not  impress  some  moral ;  even  in  love- 
verses,  it  might  be  flung  in  by  the  way.”  What  poet  was  ** 
who  took  this  medicinal  view  of  poetry  ?  Dr.  Watts,  o> 


55 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOl. 


James  Montgomery,  or  some  other  singer  of  spotless  life  and 
ardent  piety?  Not  at  all.  It  was  Waller.  A  significant 
fact  in  relation  to  our  position,  that  the  predominant  didactic 
tendency  proceeds  rather  from  the  poet’s  perception  that  it 
is  good  for  other  men  to  be  moral,  than  from  any  overflow  of 
moral  feeling  in  himself !  A  man  who  is  perpetually  think¬ 
ing  in  apothegms,  who  has  an  unintermittent  flux  of  admoni¬ 
tion,  can  have  little  energy  left  for  simple  emotion.  And 
this  is  the  case  with  Young.  In  his  highest  flights  of  con¬ 
templation,  and  his  most  wailing  soliloquies,  he  interrupts 
himself  to  fling  an  admonitory  parenthesis  at  Lorenzo,  or  to 
hint  that  “  folly’s  creed  ”  is  the  reverse  of  his  own.  Before 
his  thoughts  can  flow,  he  must  fix  his  eye  on  an  imaginary 
miscreant,  who  gives  unlimited  scope  for  lecturing,  and  re¬ 
criminates  just  enough  to  keep  the  spring  of  admonition  and 
argument  going  to  the  extent  of  nine  Books.  It  is  curious  to 
see  how  this  pedagogic  habit  of  mind  runs  through  Young’s 
contemplation  of  Nature.  As  the  tendency  to  see  our  own 
sadness  reflected  in  the  external  world  has  been  called  by  Mr. 
Ruskin  the  “  pathetic  fallacy,”  so  we  may  call  Young’s  dis¬ 
position,  to  see  a  rebuke  or  a  warning  in  every  natural  object, 
the  “  pedagogic  fallacy.”  To  his  mind,  the  heavens  are  “  for 
ever  scolding  as  they  shine ;  ”  and  the  great  function  of  the 
stars  is  to  be  a  “  lecture  to  mankind.”  The  conception  of  the 
Deity  as  a  didactic  author  is  not  merely  an  implicit  point  of 
view  with  him;  he  works  it  out  in  elaborate  imagery,  and 
at  length  makes  it  the  occasion  of  his  most  extraordinary 
achievement  in  the  “  art  of  sinking,”  by  exclaiming,  apropos, 
we  need  hardly  say,  of  the  nocturnal  heavens  :  — 

“  Divine  Instructor !  Thy  first  volume  this 
For  man’s  perusal !  all  in  capitals  !  ” 

It  is  this  pedagogic  tendency,  this  sermonizing  attitude  of 
Young’s  mind,  which  produces  the  wearisome  monotony  of 
his  pauses.  After  the  first  two  or  three  Nights,  he  is  rarely 
singing,  rarely  pouring  forth  any  continuous  melody  inspired 
by  the  spontaneous  flow  of  thought  or  feeling.  He  is  rather 


WORLDLINESB  AND  OTIIER-WORLDLINESS.  57 


occupied  with  argumentative  insistence,  with  hammering  in 
the  proofs  of  his  propositions  by  disconnected  verses,  which 
he  puts  down  at  intervals.  The  perpetual  recurrence  of  the 
pause  at  the  end  of  the  line  throughout  long  passages,  makes 
them  as  fatiguing  to  the  ear  as  a  monotonous  chant,  which 
consists  of  the  endless  repetition  of  one  short  musical  phrase. 
For  example :  — 

“  Past  hours, 

If  not  by  guilt,  yet  wound  us  by  their  flight, 

If  folly  bound  our  prospect  by  the  grave. 

All  feeling  of  futurity  be  numbed. 

All  godlike  passion  for  eternals  quenched, 

All  relish  of  realities  expired  ; 

Renounced  all  correspondence  with  the  skies ; 

Our  freedom  chained;  quite  wingless  our  desire; 

In  sense  dark-prisoned  all  that  ought  to  soar ; 

Prone  to  the  centre ;  crawling  in  the  dust ; 

Dismounted  every  great  and  glorious  aim; 

Enthralled  every  faculty  divine. 

Heart-buried  in  the  rubbish  of  the  world.” 

How  different  from  the  easy,  graceful  melody  of  CowpeFs 
blank  verse  !  Indeed,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  criticise  Young, 
without  being  reminded  at  every  step  of  the  contrast  pre¬ 
sented  to  him  by  Cowper.  And  this  contrast  urges  itself 
upon  us  the  more  from  the  fact  that  there  is,  to  a  certain 
extent,  a  parallelism  between  the  “  Night  Thoughts  ”  and  the 
“  Task.”  In  both  poems  the  author  achieves  his  greatest,  in 
virtue  of  the  new  freedom  conferred  by  blank  verse  ;  both 
poems  are  professedly  didactic,  and  mingle  much  satire  with 
their  graver  meditations ;  both  poems  are  the  productions  of 
men  whose  estimate  of  this  life  was  formed  by  the  light  of  a 
belief  in  immortality,  and  who  were  intensely  attached  to 
Christianity.  On  some  grounds  we  might  have  anticipated  a 
more  morbid  view  of  things  from  Cowper  than  from  A  oung. 
Cowper’s  religion  was  dogmatically  the  more  gloomy,  for  he 
was  a  Calvinist ;  while  Young  was  a  “  low  ”  Arminian,  —  be¬ 
lieving  that  Christ  died  for  all,  and  that  the  only  obstacle  to 
any  man’s  salvation  lay  in  his  will,  which  he  could  change  if 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  EETOT. 


he  chose.  There  was  real  and  deep  sadness  involved  in  Cow- 
per’s  personal  lot;  while  Young,  apart  from  his  ambitious 
and  greedy  discontent,  seems  to  have  had  no  great  sorrow. 

Yet,  see  how  a  lovely,  sympathetic  nature  manifests  itself 
in  spite  of  creed  and  circumstance  !  Where  is  the  poem  that 
surpasses  the  “  Task,”  —  in  the  genuine  love  it  breathes,  at 
once  towards  inanimate  and  animate  existence ;  in  truthful¬ 
ness  of  perception  and  sincerity  of  presentation ;  in  the  calm 
gladness  that  springs  from  a  delight  in  objects  for  their  own 
sake,  without  self-reference ;  in  divine  sympathy  with  the 
lowliest  pleasures,  with  the  most  short-lived  capacity  for 
pain  ?  Here  is  no  railing  at  the  earth’s  “  melancholy  map,” 
but  the  happiest  lingering  over  her  simplest  scenes  with  all 
the  fond  minuteness  of  attention  that  belongs  to  love  ;  no 
pompous  rhetoric  about  the  inferiority  of  the  brutes,  but  a 
warm  plea  on  their  behalf  against  man’s  inconsiderateness 
and  cruelty,  and  a  sense  of  enlarged  happiness  from  their 
companionship  in  enjoyment;  no  vague  rant  about  human 
misery  and  human  virtue,  but  that  close  and  vivid  presenta¬ 
tion  of  particular  sorrows  and  privations,  of  particular  deeds 
and  misdeeds,  which  is  the  direct  road  to  the  emotions.  How 
Cowper’s  exquisite  mind  falls  with  the  mild  warmth  of  morn¬ 
ing  sunlight  on  the  commonest  objects,  at  once  disclosing 
every  detail,  and  investing  every  detail  with  beauty !  No  ob¬ 
ject  is  too  small  to  prompt  his  song,  — not  the  sooty  film  on 
the  bars,  or  the  spoutless  teapot  holding  a  bit  of  mignonette, 
that  serves  to  cheer  the  dingy  town-lodging  with  a  “  hint  that 
Nature  lives ;  ”  and  yet  his  song  is  never  trivial,  for  he  is 
alive  to  small  objects,  not  because  his  mind  is  narrow,  but  be¬ 
cause  his  glance  is  clear  and  his  heart  is  large.  Instead  of 
trying  to  edify  us  by  supercilious  allusions  to  the  brutes 
and  the  stalls,  he  interests  us  in  that  tragedy  of  the  hen 
roost,  when  the  thief  has  wrenched  the  door, 

"  Where  Chanticleer  amidst  his  harem  sleeps 
In  unsuspecting  pomp  ;  ” 

in  the  patient  cattle,  that  on  tbe  winter’s  morning 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  59 


“  Mourn  in  corners  where  the  fence 
Screens  them,  and  seem  half  petrified  to  sleep 
In  unrecumbent  sadness  ;  ” 

in  the  little  squirrel,  that,  surprised  by  him  in  his  woodland 
walk, 

“  At  once,  swift  as  a  bird. 

Ascends  the  neighboring  beech ;  there  whisks  his  brush 
And  perks  his  ears,  and  stamps,  and  cries  aloud, 

With  all  the  prettiness  of  feigned  alarm 
And  anger  insignificantly  fierce.” 

And  then  he  passes  into  reflection,  not  with  curt  apothegm 
and  snappish  reproof,  but  with  that  melodious  flow  of  utter¬ 
ance  which  belongs  to  thought  when  it  is  carried  along  in  a 
stream  of  feeling  :  — 

“  The  heart  is  hard  in  nature,  and  unfit 
For  human  fellowship,  —  as  being  void 
Of  sympathy,  and  therefore  dead  alike 
To  love  and  friendship  both,  —  that  is  not  pleased 
With  sight  of  animals  enjoying  life. 

Nor  feels  their  happiness  augment  his  own.” 

His  large  and  tender  heart  embraces  the  most  every-day  forms 
of  human  life  —  the  carter  driving  his  team  through  the 
wintry  storm ;  the  cottager’s  wife  who,  painfully  nursing  the 
embers  on  her  hearth,  while  her  infants  “  sit  cowering  o’er 
the  sparks,” 

“  Retires,  content  to  quake,  so  they  be  warmed ;  ” 

or  the  villager,  with  her  little  ones,  going  out  to  pick 

“  A  cheap  but  wholesome  salad  from  the  brook;  ” 

and  he  compels  our  colder  natures  to  follow  his  in  its  mani¬ 
fold  sympathies,  not  by  exhortations,  not  by  telling  us  to 
meditate  at  midnight,  to  indulge  the  thought  of  death,  or 
to  ask  ourselves  liow  we  shall  “  weather  an  eternal  night,” 
but  by  jjresenting  to  us  the  object  of  his  compassion  truthfully 
and  lovingly.  And  when  lie  handles  greater  themes,  when  he 
takes  a  wider  survey,  and  considers  the  men  or  the  deeds 


60 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


which  have  a  direct  influence  on  the  welfare  of  communities 
and  nations,  there  is  the  same  unselfish  warmth  of  feeling, 
the  same  scrupulous  truthfulness.  He  is  never  vague  in  his 
remonstrance  or  his  satire ;  but  puts  his  finger  on  some  par¬ 
ticular  vice  or  folly,  which  excites  his  indignation  or  “  dis¬ 
solves  his  heart  in  pity,”  because  of  some  specific  injury  it 
does  to  his  fellow-man  or  to  a  sacred  cause.  And  when  he  is 
asked  why  he  interests  himself  about  the  sorrows  and  wrongs 
of  others,  hear  what  is  the  reason  he  gives.  Not,  like  Young, 
that  the  movements  of  the  planets  show  a  mutual  dependence, 
and  that,  — 

“  Thus  man  his  sovereign  duty  learns  in  this 
Material  picture  of  benevolence ;  ” 

or  that,  — 

“  More  generous  sorrow  while  it  sinks,  exalts. 

And  conscious  virtue  mitigates  the  pang.” 

What  is  Cowper’s  answer,  when  he  imagines  some  “sage 
erudite,  profound,”  asking  him  “What’s  the  world  to 
you  ?  ”  — 

“  Much.  I  was  born  of  woman,  and  drew  milk 
As  sweet  as  charity  from  human  breasts. 

I  think,  articulate,  I  laugh  and  weep, 

And  exercise  all  functions  of  a  man. 

How  then  should  I  and  any  man  that  lives 
Be  strangers  to  each  other  1  ” 

Young  is  astonished  that  men  can  make  war  on  each,  other 
that  any  one  can  “  seize  his  brother’s  throat,”  while 

“  The  Planets  cry,  ‘  Forbear.’  ” 

Cowper  weeps  because 

“  There  is  no  flesh  in  man’s  obdurate  heart : 

It  does  not  feel  for  man." 

Young  applauds  God  as  a  monarch  with  an  empire,  and  a 
court  quite  superior  to  the  English,  or  as  an  author  who  pro¬ 
duces  “  volumes  for  man’s  perusal.”  Cowper  sees  his  Father’s 
love  in  all  the  gentle  pleasures  of  the  home  fireside,  in  tha 
charms  even  of  the  wintry  landscape,  and  thinks,  — 


WORLDLINESS  AND  OTHER-WORLDLINESS.  61 


*  Happy  who  walks  with  him !  whom  what  he  find* 

Of  flavor  or  of  scent  in  fruit  or  flower, 

Or  what  he  views  of  beautiful  or  grand 
In  nature,  from  the  broad,  majestic  oak 
To  the  green  blade  that  twinkles  in  the  sun. 

Prompts  with  remembrance  of  a  present  God." 

To  conclude,  —  for  we  must  arrest  ourselves  in  a  contrast 
that  would  lead  us  beyond  our  bounds, — Young  flies  for 
his  utmost  consolation  to  the  Day  of  Judgment,  when 

“  Final  Ruin  fiercely  drives 
Her  ploughshare  o’er  creation ;  ” 

when  earth,  stars,  and  sun  are  swept  aside,  — 

“  And  now,  all  dross  removed,  heaven’s  own  pure  day. 

Full  on  the  confines  of  our  ether,  flames  : 

While  (dreadful  contrast!)  far  (how  far !-)  beneath, 

Hell,  bursting,  belches  forth  her  blazing  seas. 

And  storms  sulphureous  ;  her  voracious  jaws 
Expanding  wide,  and  roaring  for  her  prey,”  — 

Dr.  Young,  and  similar  “  ornaments  of  religion  and  virtue,” 
passing  of  course  with  grateful  “ applause”  into  the  upper 
region.  Cowper  finds  his  highest  inspiration  in  the  Millen¬ 
nium  —  in  the  restoration  of  this,  our  beloved  home  of  earth, 
to  perfect  holiness  and  bliss,  when  the  Supreme 

“  Shall  visit  earth  in  mercy  ;  shall  descend 
Propitious  in  his  chariot  paved  with  love ; 

And  what  his  storms  have  blasted  and  defaced 
For  man’s  revolt,  shall  with  a  smile  repair.” 

And  into  what  delicious  melody  his  song  flows  at  the 
thought  of  that  blessedness  to  be  enjoyed  by  future  genera¬ 
tions  on  earth !  — 

“  The  dwellers  in  the  vales  and  on  the  rocks 
Shout  to  each  other,  and  the  mountain-tops 
From  distant  mountains  catch  the  flying  joy ; 

Till,  nation  after  nation  taught  the  strain, 

Earth  rolls  the  rapturous  Hosanna  round  !  ” 

The  sum  of  our  comparison  is  this  :  In  Young  we  have  the 
type  of  that  deficient  human  sympathy,  that  impiety  towards 


62 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


the  present  and  the  visible,  which  flies  for  its  motives,  its 
sanctities,  and  its  religion,  to  the  remote,  the  vague,  and  the 
unknown  ;  in  Cowper  we  have  the  type  of  that  genuine  love 
which  cherishes  things  in  proportion  to  their  nearness,  and 
feels  its  reverence  grow  in  proportion  to  the  intimacy  of  its 
knowledge. 


Portrait  of  Heine. 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


u  ''VTOTHING,”  says  Goethe,  “is  more  significant  of  men’s 
-IN  character  than  what  they  find  laughable.”  The  truth 
of  this  observation  would  perhaps  have  been  more  apparent 
if  he  had  said  culture  instead  of  character.  The  last  thing 
in  which  the  cultivated  man  can  have  community  with  the 
vulgar  is  their  jocularity;  and  we  can  hardly  exhibit  more 
strikingly  the  wide  gulf  which  separates  him  from  them,  than 
by  comparing  the  object  which  shakes  the  diaphragm  of  a 
coal-heaver,  with  the  highly  complex  pleasure  derived  from  a 
real  witticism.  That  any  high  order  of  wit  is  exceedingly 
complex,  and  demands  a  ripe  and  strong  mental  development, 
has  one  evidence  in  the  fact  that  we  do  not  find  it  in  boys  at 
all  in  proportion  to  their  manifestation  of  other  powers. 
Clever  boys  generally  aspire  to  the  heroic  and  poetic  rather 
than  the  comic,  and  the  crudest  of  all  their  efforts  are  their 
jokes.  Many  a  witty  man  will  remember  how  in  his  school¬ 
days  a  practical  joke,  more  or  less  Rabelaisian,  was  for  him 
the  ne  plus  ultra  of  the  ludicrous.  It  seems  to  have  been  the 
same  with  the  boyhood  of  the  human  race.  The  history  and 
literature  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  give  the  idea  of  a  people 
who  went  about  their  business  and  tlieir  pleasure  as  gravely 
as  a  society  of  beavers  ;  the  smile  and  the  laugh  are  often 
mentioned  metaphorically,  but  the  smile  is  one  of  compla¬ 
cency,  the  laugh  is  one  of  scorn.  Nor  can  we  imagine 
that  the  facetious  element  was  very  strong  in  the  Egyptians  ; 
no  laughter  lurks  in  the  wondering  eyes  and  the  broad  calm 
lips  of  their  statues.  Still  less  can  the  Assyrians  have  had 
any  genius  for  the  comic;  the  round  eyes  and  simpering 


64 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


satisfaction  of  their  ideal  faces  belong  to  a  type  which  is  not 
witty,  but  the  cause  of  wit  in  others.  The  fun  of  these  early 
races  was,  we  fancy,  of  the  after-dinner  kind  —  loud-throated 
laughter  over  the  wine-cup,  taken  too  little  account  of  in 
sober  moments  to  enter  as  an  element  into  their  Art,  and 
differing  as  much  from  the  laughter  of  a  Chamfort  or  a  Sheri¬ 
dan  as  the  gastronomic  enjoyment  of  an  ancient  Briton,  whose 
dinner  had  no  other  removes  than  from  acorns  to  beechmast 
and  back  again  to  acorns,  differed  from  the  subtle  pleasures 
of  the  palate  experienced  by  his  turtle-eating  descendant.  In 
fact  they  had  to  live  seriously  through  the  stages  which  to 
subsequent  races  were  to  become  comedy,  as  those  amiable- 
looking  preadamite  amphibia,  which  Professor  Owen  has  re¬ 
stored  for  us  in  effigy  at  Sydenham,  took  perfectly  au  serieux 
the  grotesque  physiognomies  of  their  kindred.  Heavy  ex¬ 
perience  in  their  case,  as  in  every  other,  was  the  base  from 
which  the  salt  of  future  wit  was  to  be  made. 

Humor  is  of  earlier  growth  than  wit,  and  it  is  in  accord¬ 
ance  with  this  earlier  growth  that  it  has  more  affinity  with 
the  poetic  tendencies,  while  wit  is  more  nearly  allied  to  the 
ratiocinative  intellect.  Humor  draws  its  materials  from 
situations  and  characteristics ;  wit  seizes  on  unexpected  and 
complex  relations.  Humor  is  chiefly  representative  and 
descriptive;  it  is  diffuse,  and  flows  along  without  any  other 
law  than  its  own  fantastic  will ;  or  it  flits  about  like  a  will- 
of-the-wisp,  amazing  us  by  its  whimsical  transitions.  Wit  is 
brief  and  sudden,  and  sharply  defined  as  a  crystal ;  it  does 
not  make  pictures,  it  is  not  fantastic ;  but  it  detects  an  un¬ 
suspected  analogy  or  suggests  a  startling  or  confounding  in¬ 
ference.  Every  one  who  has  had  the  opportunity  of  making 
the  comparison  will  remember  that  the  effect  produced  on 
him  by  some  witticisms  is  closely  akin  to  the  effect  produced 
on  him  by  subtle  reasoning  which  lays  open  a  fallacy  or 
absurdity,  and  there  are  persons  whose  delight  in  such  reason¬ 
ing  always  manifests  itself  in  laughter.  This  affinity  of  wit 
with  ratiocination  is  the  more  obvious  in  proportion  as  the 
species  of  wit  is  higher,  and  deals  less  with  words  and  with 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


65 


superficialities  than  with  the  essential  qualities  of  things. 
Some  of  Johnson’s  most  admirable  witticisms  consist  in  the 
suggestion  of  an  analogy  which  immediately  exposes  the 
absurdity  of  an  action  or  proposition,  and  it  is  only  their 
ingenuity,  condensation,  and  instantaneousness  which  lift 
them  from  reasoning  into  wit ;  they  are  reasoning  raised  to 
a  higher  power.  On  the  other  hand,  humor,  in  its  higher 
forms,  and  in  proportion  as  it  associates  itself  with  the  sym¬ 
pathetic  emotions,  continually  passes  into  poetry ;  nearly  all 
great  modern  humorists  may  be  called  prose  poets. 

Some  confusion  as  to  the  nature  of  humor  has  been  cre¬ 
ated  by  the  fact,  that  those  who  have  written  most  eloquently 
on  it  have  dwelt  almost  exclusively  on  its  higher  forms,  and 
have  defined  humor  in  general  as  the  sympathetic  presentation 
of  incongruous  elements  in  human  nature  and  life ;  a  defini¬ 
tion  which  only  applies  to  its  later  development.  A  great 
deal  of  humor  may  co-exist  with  a  great  deal  of  barbarism,  as 
we  see  in  the  Middle  Ages ;  but  the  strongest  flavor  of  the 
humor  in  such  cases  will  come,  not  from  sympathy,  but  more 
probably  from  triumphant  egoism  or  intolerance ;  at  best  it 
will  be  the  love  of  the  ludicrous  exhibiting  itself  in  illustra¬ 
tions  of  successful  cunning  and  of  the  lex  talionis,  as  in 
“  Reineke  Fuchs,”  or  shaking  off  in  a  holiday  mood  the  yoke 
of  a  too  exacting  faith,  as  in  the  old  Mysteries.  Again,  it  is 
impossible  to  deny  a  high  degree  of  humor  to  many  practical 
jokes,  but  no  sympathetic  nature  can  enjoy  them.  Strange 
as  the  genealogy  may  seem,  the  original  parentage  of  that 
wonderful  and  delicious  mixture  of  fun,  fancy,  philosophy, 
and  feeling,  which  constitutes  modern  humor,  was  probably 
the  cruel  mockery  of  a  savage  at  the  writhings  of  a  suffering 
enemy,  —  such  is  the  tendency  of  things  towards  the  good 
and  beautiful  on  this  earth  !  Probably  the  reason  why  high 
culture  demands  more  complete  harmony  with  its  moral 
sympathies  in  humor  than  in  wit,  is  that  humor  is  in  its 
nature  more  prolix  —  that  it  has  not  the  direct  and  irresist¬ 
ible  force  of  wit.  Wit  is  an  electric  shock,  which  takes  us 
by  violence,  quite  independently  of  our  predominant  mental 

vnr..  t-x 


66 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


disposition ;  but  humor  approaches  us  more  deliberately  and 
leaves  us  masters  of  ourselves.  Hence  it  is,  that  while  coarse 
and  cruel  humor  has  almost  disappeared  from  contemporary 
literature,  coarse  and  cruel  wit  abounds  ;  even  refined  men 
cannot  help  laughing  at  a  coarse  bon  mot  or  a  lacerating  per¬ 
sonality,  if  the  “  shock  ”  of  the  witticism  is  a  powerful  one ; 
while  mere  fun  will  have  no  power  over  them  if  it  jar  on 
their  moral  taste.  Hence,  too,  it  is,  that  while  wit  is  peren¬ 
nial,  humor  is  liable  to  become  superannuated. 

As  is  usual  with  definitions  and  classifications,  however, 
this  distinction  between  wit  and  humor  does  not  exactly 
represent  the  actual  fact.  Like  all  other  species,  wit  and 
humor  overlap  and  blend  with  each  other.  There  are  bon 
mots,  like  many  of  Charles  Lamb’s,  which  are  a  sort  of  face¬ 
tious  hybrids ;  we  hardly  know  whether  to  call  them  witty  or 
humorous  ;  there  are  rather  lengthy  descriptions  or  narra¬ 
tives,  which,  like  Voltaire’s  “  Micromegas,”  would  be  more 
humorous  if  they  were  not  so  sparkling  and  antithetic,  so 
pregnant  with  suggestion  and  satire,  that  we  are  obliged  to 
call  them  witty.  We  rarely  find  wit  untempered  by  humor, 
or  humor  without  a  spice  of  wit ;  and  sometimes  we  find 
them  both  united  in  the  highest  degree  in  the  same  mind, 
is  in  Sliakspeare  and  Moliere.  A  happy  conjunction  this, 
:or  wit  is  apt  to  be  cold  and  thin-lipped  and  Mephistophe- 
ean  in  men  who  have  no  relish  for  humor,  whose  lungs  do 
lever  crow  like  Chanticleer  at  fun  and  drollery ;  and  broad- 
laced,  rollicking  humor  needs  the  refining  influence  of  wit. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  there  is  no  really  fine  writing  in 
which  wit  has  not  an  implicit,  if  not  an  explicit,  action.  The 
wit  may  never  rise  to  the  surface,  it  may  never  flame  out 
into  a  witticism ;  but  it  helps  to  give  brightness  and  trans¬ 
parency,  it  warns  off  from  flights  and  exaggerations  which 
verge  on  the  ridiculous ;  in  every  genre  of  writing  it  pre¬ 
serves  a  man  from  sinking  into  the  genre  ennuyeux.  And  it  is 
eminently  needed  for  this  office  in  humorous  writing  ;  for  as 
humor  has  no  limits  imposed  on  it  by  its  material,  no  law  but 
its  own  exuberance,  it  is  apt  to  become  preposterous  and 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


67 


wearisome  unless  checked  by  wit,  which  is  the  enemy  of  a.l 
monotony,  of  all  lengtliiness,  of  all  exaggeration. 

Perhaps  the  nearest  approach  Nature  has  given  us  to  a 
complete  analysis,  in  which  wit  is  as  thoroughly  exhausted 
of  humor  as  possible,  and  humor  as  bare  as  possible  of  wit, 
is  in  the  typical  Frenchman  and  the  typical  German.  Vol¬ 
taire,  the  intensest  example  of  pure  wit,  fails  in  most  of  his 
fictions  from  his  lack  of  humor.  “  Micromegas  ”  is  a  perfect 
tale,  because,  as  it  deals  chiefly  with  philosophic  ideas 
and  does  not  touch  the  marrow  of  human  feeling  and  life, 
the  writer’s  wit  and  wisdom  were  all-sufficient  for  his  pur¬ 
pose.  Not  so  with  “  Candide.”  Here  Voltaire  had  to  give 
pictures  of  life  as  well  as  to  convey  philosophic  truth  and 
satire,  and  here  we  feel  the  want  of  humor.  The  sense  of 
the  ludicrous  is  continually  defeated  by  disgust,  and  the 
scenes,  instead  of  presenting  us  with  an  amusing  or  agreeable 
picture,  are  only  the  frame  for  a  witticism.  On  the  other 
hand,  German  humor  generally  shows  no  sense  of  measure, 
no  instinctive  tact ;  it  is  either  floundering  and  clumsy  as  the 
antics  of  a  leviathan,  or  laborious  and  interminable  as  a  Lap- 
land  day,  in  which  one  loses  all  hope  that  the  stars  and  quiet 
will  ever  come.  For  this  reason,  Jean  Paul,  the  greatest  of 
German  humorists,  is  unendurable  to  many  readers,  and  fre¬ 
quently  tiresome  to  all.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  German 
shows  the  absence  of  that  delicate  perception,  that  sensibility 
to  gradation,  which  is  the  essence  of  tact  and  taste,  and  the 
necessary  concomitant  of  wit.  All  his  subtlety  is  reserved  for 
the  region  of  metaphysics.  For  Identitdt  in  the  abstract,  no 
one  can  have  an  acuter  vision,  but  in  the  concrete  he  is  satis¬ 
fied  with  a  very  loose  approximation.  He  has  the  finest  nose 
for  Empirismus  in  philosophical  doctrine,  but  the  presence  of 
more  or  less  tobacco-smoke  in  the  air  he  breathes  is  imper¬ 
ceptible  to  him.  To  the  typical  German  —  Vetter  Michel  — 
it  is  indifferent  whether  his  door-lock  will  catch ;  whether  his 
tea-cup  be  more  or  less  than  an  inch  thick ;  whether  or  not 
his  book  have  every  other  leaf  unstitched ;  whether  his 
neighbor’s  conversation  be  more  or  less  of  a  shout ;  whether 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


B5 

lie  pronounce  b  or  p,  t  or  d ;  whether  or  not  his  adored  one’s 
teeth  be  few  and  far  between.  He  has  the  same  sort  of  in¬ 
sensibility  to  gradations  in  time.  A  German  comedy  is  like 
a  German  sentence ;  you  see  no  reason  in  its  structure  why 
it  should  ever  come  to  an  end,  and  you  accept  the  conclusion 
as  an  arrangement  of  Providence  rather  than  of  the  author. 
We  have  heard  Germans  use  the  word  Langeweile,  the  equiv¬ 
alent  for  ennui,  and  we  have  secretly  wondered  what  it  can 
be  that  produces  ennui  in  a  German.  Not  the  longest  of  long 
tragedies,  for  we  have  known  him  to  pronounce  that  hochst 
fesselnd  (so  enchaining  ! )  ;  not  the  heaviest  of  heavy  books, 
for  he  delights  in  that  as  grundlich  (  deep,  sir,  deep  !  )  ;  not 
the  slowest  of  journeys  in  a  Post-wagen,  for  the  slower  the 
horses,  the  more  cigars  he  can  smoke  before  he  reaches  his 
journey’s  end.  German  ennui  must  be  something  as  super¬ 
lative  as  Barclay’s  treble  X,  which,  we  suppose,  implies  an 
extremely  unknown  quantity  of  stupefaction. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  national  deficiency  in  nicety  of 
perception  must  have  its  effect  on  the  national  appreciation 
and  exhibition  of  humor.  You  find  in  Germany  ardent 
admirers  of  Shakspeare,  who  tell  you  that  what  they  think 
most  admirable  in  him  is  his  Wortspiel,  his  verbal  quibbles ; 
and  one  of  these,  a  man  of  no  slight  culture  and  refinement, 
once  cited  to  a  friend  of  ours  Proteus’s  joke  in  “  The  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona,”  “Nod,  I?  why  that’s  Noddy,”  as 
a  transcendent  specimen  of  Sliakspearian  wit.  German  face¬ 
tiousness  is  seldom  comic  to  foreigners,  and  an  Englishman 
with  a  swelled  cheek  might  take  up  “  Kladderadatsch,”  the 
German  “  Punch,”  without  any  danger  of  agitating  his  facial 
muscles.  Indeed,  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that,  among  the 
five  great  races  concerned  in  modern  civilization,  the  German 
race  is  the  only  one  which,  up  to  the  present  century,  had 
contributed  nothing  classic  to  the  common  stock  of  European 
wit  and  humor ;  for  “  Reineke  Fuchs  ”  cannot  be  regarded  as 
a  peculiarly  Teutonic  product.  Italy  was  the  birthplace  of 
Pantomime  and  the  immortal  Pulcinello  ;  Spain  had  produced 
Cervantes ;  France  had  produced  Rabelais  and  Moliere,  and 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


69 


classic  wits  innumerable ;  England  had  yielded  Shakspeare 
and  a  host  of  humorists.  But  Germany  had  borne  no  great 
comic  dramatist,  no  great  satirist,  and  she  has  not  yet  re¬ 
paired  the  omission ;  she  had  not  even  produced  any  humorist 
of  a  high  order.  Among  her  great  writers,  Lessing  is  the 
one  who  is  the  most  specifically  witty.  We  feel  the  implicit 
influence  of  wit,  the  “flavor  of  mind,”  throughout  his 
writings ;  and  it  is  often  concentrated  into  pungent  satire,  as 
every  reader  of  the  “  Hamburgische  Dramaturgie  ”  remem¬ 
bers.  Still,  Lessing’s  name  has  not  become  European  through 
his  wit,  and  his  charming  comedy,  “  Minna  von  Barnhelm,” 
has  won  no  place  on  a  foreign  stage.  Of  course,  we  do  not 
pretend  to  an  exhaustive  acquaintance  with  German  litera¬ 
ture  ;  we  not  only  admit,  we  are  sure,  that  it  includes  much 
comic  writing  of  which  we  know  nothing.  We  simply  state 
the  fact,  that  no  German  production  of  that  kind,  before  the 
present  century,  ranked  as  European ;  a  fact  which  does  not, 
indeed,  determine  the  amount  of  the  national  facetiousness, 
but  which  is  quite  decisive  as  to  its  quality.  Whatever  may 
be  the  stock  of  fun  which  Germany  yields  for  home-consump¬ 
tion,  she  has  provided  little  for  the  palate  of  other  lands. 
All  honor  to  her  for  the  still  greater  things  she  has  done  for 
us !  She  has  fought  the  hardest  fight  for  freedom  of  thought, 
has  produced  the  grandest  inventions,  has  made  magnificent 
contributions  to  science,  has  given  us  some  of  the  divinest 
poetry,  and  quite  the  divinest  music,  in  the  world.  No  one 
reveres  and  treasures  the  products  of  the  German  mind  more 
than  we  do.  To  say  that  that  mind  is  not  fertile  in  wit,  is 
only  like  saying  that  excellent  wheat-land  is  not  rich  pasture ; 
to  say  that  we  do  not  enjoy  German  facetiousness,  is  no  more 
than  to  say  that,  though  the  horse  is  the  finest  of  quadrupeds, 
we  do  not  like  him  to  lay  his  hoof  playfully  on  our  shoulder. 
Still,  as  we  have  noticed  that  the  pointless  puns  and  stupid 
jocularity  of  the  boy  may  ultimately  be  developed  into  the 
epigrammatic  brilliancy  and  polished  playfulness  of  the  man, 
as  we  believe  that  racy  wit  and  chastened  delicate  humor 
are  inevitably  the  results  of  invigorated  and  refined  mental 


70 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


activity,  we  can  also  believe  that  Germany  will,  one  day, 
yield  a  crop  of  wits  and  humorists. 

Perhaps  there  is  already  an  earnest  of  that  future  crop  in 
the  existence  of  Heinrich  Heine,  a  German  born  with  the 
present  century,  who,  to  Teutonic  imagination,  sensibility, 
and  humor,  adds  an  amount  of  esprit  that  would  make  him 
brilliant  among  the  most  brilliant  of  Frenchmen.  True,  this 
unique  German  wit  is  half  a  Hebrew ;  but  he  and  his  ances¬ 
tors  spent  their  youth  in  German  air,  and  were  reared  on 
Wurst  and  Sauerkraut ,  so  that  he  is  as  much  a  German  as  a 
pheasant  is  an  English  bird,  or  a  potato  an  Irish  vegetable. 
But  whatever  else  he  may  be,  Heine  is  one  of  the  most  remark¬ 
able  men  of  this  age :  no  echo,  but  a  real  voice,  and  therefore, 
like  all  genuine  things  in  this  world,  worth  studying ;  a  sur¬ 
passing  lyric  poet,  who  has  uttered  our  feelings  for  us  in 
delicious  song ;  a  humorist,  who  touches  leaden  folly  with  the 
magic  wand  of  his  fancy,  and  transmutes  it  into  the  fine  gold 
of  art  —  who  sheds  his  sunny  smile  on  human  tears,  and 
makes  them  a  beauteous  rainbow  on  the  cloudy  background 
of  life ;  a  wit,  who  holds  in  his  mighty  hand  the  most  scorch¬ 
ing  lightnings  of  satire ;  an  artist  in  prose  literature,  who  has 
shown  even  more  completely  than  Goethe  the  possibilities  of 
German  prose  ;  and  —  in  spite  of  all  charges  against  him, 
true  as  well  as  false  —  a  lover  of  freedom,  who  has  spoken 
wise  and  brave  words  on  behalf  of  his  fellow-men.  He  is, 
moreover,  a  suffering  man,  who,  with  all  the  highly  wrought 
sensibility  of  genius,  has  to  endure  terrible  physical  ills ;  and 
as  such  he  calls  forth  more  than  an  intellectual  interest.  It 
is  true,  alas  !  that  there  is  a  heavy  weight  in  the  other  scale 
—  that  Heine’s  magnificent  powers  have  often  served  only  to 
give  electric  force  to  the  expression  of  debased  feeling,  so 
that  his  works  are  no  Phidian  statue  of  gold  and  ivory  and 
gems,  but  have  not  a  little  brass  and  iron  and  miry  clay 
mingled  with  the  precious  metal.  The  audacity  of  his  occa¬ 
sional  coarseness  and  personality  is  unparalleled  in  contem 
porary  literature,  and  has  hardly  been  exceeded  by  the  license 
of  former  days.  Hence,  before  his  volumes  are  put  within 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


71 


the  reach  of  immature  minds,  there  is  need  of  a  friendly  pen¬ 
knife  to  exercise  a  strict  censorship.  Yet,  when  all  coarse¬ 
ness,  all  scurrility,  all  Mephistophelean  contempt  for  the 
reverent  feelings  of  other  men,  is  removed,  there  will  be  a 
plenteous  remainder  of  exquisite  poetry,  of  wit,  humor,  and 
just  thought.  It  is  apparently  too  often  a  congenial  task  to 
write  severe  words  about  the  transgressions  committed  by 
men  of  genius,  especially  when  the  censor  has  the  advantage 
of  being  himself  a  man  of  no  genius,  so  that  those  transgres¬ 
sions  seem  to  him  quite  gratuitous ;  he,  forsooth,  never  lac¬ 
erated  any  one  by  his  wit,  or  gave  irresistible  piquancy  to  a 
coarse  allusion,  and  his  indignation  is  not  mitigated  by  any 
knowledge  of  the  temptation  that  lies  in  transcendent  power. 
We  are  also  apt  to  measure  what  a  gifted  man  has  done  by 
our  arbitrary  conception  of  what  he  might  have  done,  rather 
than  by  a  comparison  of  his  actual  doings  with  our  own  or 
those  of  other  ordinary  men.  We  make  ourselves  over- 
zealous  agents  of  heaven,  and  demand  that  our  brother  should 
bring  usurious  interest  for  his  five  Talents,  forgetting  that  it 
is  less  easy  to  manage  five  Talents  than  two.  Whatever  ben¬ 
efit  there  may  be  in  denouncing  the  evil,  it  is  after  all  more 
edifying,  and  certainly  more  cheering,  to  appreciate  the  good. 
Hence,  in  endeavoring  to  give  our  readers  some  account  of 
Heine  and  his  works,  we  shall  not  dwell  lengthily  on  his  fail¬ 
ings  ;  we  shall  not  hold  the  candle  up  to  dusty,  vermin- 
haunted  corners,  but  let  the  light  fall  as  much  as  possible  on 
the  nobler  and  more  attractive  details.  Our  sketch  of  Heine’s 
life,  which  has  been  drawn  from  various  sources,  will  be  free 
from  everything  like  intrusive  gossip,  and  will  derive  its 
coloring  chiefly  from  the  autobiographical  hints  and  descrip¬ 
tions  scattered  through  his  own  writings.  Those  of  our  read¬ 
ers  who  happen  to  know  nothing  of  Heine,  will  in  this  way 
be  making  their  acquaintance  with  the  waiter  while  they  are 
learning  the  outline  of  his  career. 

We  have  said  that  Heine  was  born  with  the  present 
century  ;  but  this  statement  is  not  precise,  for  we  learn  that, 
according  to  his  certificate  of  baptism,  he  was  born  December 


72 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


12,  1799.  However,  as  he  himself  says,  the  important 
point  is,  that  he  was  born,  and  born  on  the  banks  of  the 
Rhine  at  Diisseldorf,  where  his  father  was  a  merchant.  In 
his  “  Reisebilder  ”  he  gives  us  some  recollections,  in  his  wild 
poetic  way,  of  the  dear  old  town  where  he  spent  his  child¬ 
hood,  and  of  his  school  boy  troubles  there.  We  shall  quote 
from  these  in  butterfly  fashion,  sipping  a  little  nectar  here 
and  there,  without  regard  to  any  strict  order  :  — 

“  I  first  saw  the  light  on  the  banks  of  that  lovely  stream,  where 
folly  grows  on  the  green  hills,  and  in  autumn  is  plucked,  pressed, 
poured  into  casks,  and  sent  into  foreign  lands.  Believe  me,  I  yester¬ 
day  heard  some  one  utter  folly  which,  in  anno  1811,  lay  in  a  buuch  of 
grapes  I  then  saw  growing  on  the  Johannisberg.  .  .  .  Mon  Dieu!  if 
I  had  only  such  faith  iu  me  that  I  could  remove  mountains,  the  Johan¬ 
nisberg  would  be  the  very  mountain  I  should  send  for  wherever  I 
might  be ;  but  as  my  faith  is  not  so  strong,  imagination  must  help  me, 
and  it  transports  me  at  once  to  the  lovely  Rhine.  ...  I  am  again 
a  child,  and  playing  with  other  children  on  the  Schlossplatz,  at 
Diisseldorf  on  the  Rhine.  Yes,  madam,  there  was  I  born  ;  and  I  note 
this  expressly,  in  case,  after  my  death,  seven  cities  —  Schilda,  Kriih- 
winkel,  Polkwitz,  Bockum,  Diilken,  Gottingen,  and  Schoppenstadt  — 
should  contend  for  the  honor  of  being  my  birthplace.  Diisseldorf 
is  a  town  on  the  Rhine;  sixteen  thousand  men  live  there,  and  many 
hundred  thousand  men  besides  lie  buried  there.  .  .  .  Among  them, 
many  of  whom  my  mother  says  that  it  would  be  better  if  they  were 
still  living,  —  for  example,  my  grandfather  and  my  uncle,  the  old  Herr 
von  Geldern,  and  the  young  Herr  von  Geldern,  both  such  celebrated  doc¬ 
tors,  who  saved  so  many  men  from  death,  and  yet  must  die  themselves. 
And  the  pious  Ursula,  who  carried  me  in  her  arms  when  I  was  a  child, 
also  lies  buried  there,  and  a  rosebush  grows  on  her  grave ;  she  loved 
the  scent  of  roses  so  well  in  life,  and  her  heart  was  pure  rose-incense 
and  goodness.  The  knowing  old  Canon,  too,  lies  buried  there. 
Heavens,  what  an  object  he  looked  when  I  last  saw  him  !  He  was 
made  up  of  nothing  but  mind  and  plasters ,  and  nevertheless  studied 
day  and  night,  as  if  he  were  alarmed  lest  the  worms  should  find  an 
idea  too  little  in  his  head.  And  the  little  William  lies  there,  and  for 
this  I  am  to  blame.  We  were  schoolfellows  in  the  Frauciscan  mon¬ 
astery,  and  were  playing  on  that  side  of  it  where  the  Diissel  flows  be¬ 
tween  stone  walls ;  and  I  said,  ‘  William,  fetch  out  the  kitten  that 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


73 


has  just  fallen  in ;  ’  and  merrily  he  went  down  on  to  the  plank  which 
lay  across  the  brook,  snatched  the  kitten  out  of  the  water,  but  fell  iD 
himself,  and  was  dragged  out  dripping  and  dead.  The  kitten  lived  to  a 
good  old  age.  .  .  .  Princes  in  that  day  were  not  the  tormented  race  as 
they  are  now;  the  crown  grew  firmly  on  their  heads,  and  at  night 
they  drew  a  nightcap  over  it,  and  slept  peacefully,  and  peacefully 
slept  the  people  at  their  feet ;  and  when  the  people  waked  in  the  morn¬ 
ing,  they  said,  ‘Good-morning,  father  P  and  the  princes  answered, 
‘  Good-inoruiug,  dear  children  ! ’  But  it  was  suddenly  quite  otherwise; 
for  when  we  awoke  one  morning  at  Diisseldorf,  and  were  ready  to  say, 
‘  Good-morning,  father  !  ’ —  lo !  the  father  was  gone  away ;  and  in 
the  whole  town  there  was  nothing  but  dumb  sorrow,  everywhere  a  sort 
of  funeral  disposition ;  and  people  glided  along  silently  to  the  market, 
and  read  the  long  placard  placed  on  the  door  of  the  Town  Hall.  It 
was  dismal  weather;  yet  the  lean  tailor,  Kilian,  stood  in  his  nankeen 
jacket,  which  he  usually  wore  only  in  the  house,  and  his  blue  worsted 
stockings  hung  down  so  that  his  naked  legs  peeped  out  mournfully, 
and  his  thin  lips  trembled  while  he  muttered  the  announcement  to 
himself.  And  an  old  soldier  read  rather  louder,  and  at  many  a  word  a 
crystal  tear  trickled  down  to  his  brave  old  mustache.  I  stood  near 
him  and  wept  in  company,  and  asked  him  why  we  wept  ?  He 
answered,  1  The  Elector  has  abdicated.’  And  then  he  read  again ; 
and  at  the  words,  ‘  for  the  long-manifested  fidelity  of  my  subjects,’  and 
‘  hereby  set  you  free  from  your  allegiance,’  he  wept  more  than  ever. 
It  is  strangely  touching  to  see  an  old  man  like  that,  with  faded  uni¬ 
form  and  scarred  face,  weep  so  bitteily  all  of  a  sudden.  While  we 
were  reading,  the  Electoral  arms  were  taken  down  from  the  Town 
Hall ;  everything  had  such  a  desolate  air,  that  it  was  as  if  an  eclipse 
of  the  sun  were  expected.  ...  I  went  home  and  wept,  and  wailed 
out,  1  The  Elector  has  abdicated !  ’  In  vain  my  mother  took  a 
world  of  trouble  to  explain  the  thing  to  me.  I  knew  what  I  knew  $ 
I  was  not  to  be  persuaded,  but  went  crying  to  bed,  and  in  the  night 
dreamed  that  the  world  was  at  an  end.” 

The  next  morning,  however,  the  sun  rises  as  usual,  and 
Joachim  Murat  is  proclaimed  Grand  Duke,  whereupon  there 
is  a  holiday  at  the  public  school,  and  Heinrich  (or  Harry, 
for  that  was  his  baptismal  name,  which  he  afterwards  had 
the  good  taste  to  change),  perched  on  the  bronze  horse 
of  the  Electoral  statue,  sees  quite  a  different  scene  from 
yesterday’s  •  — 


74 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


“  The  next  day  the  world  was  again  all  in  order,  and  we  had  school 
as  before,  and  things  were  got  by  heart  as  before ;  the  Roman  em¬ 
perors,  chronology,  the  nouns  in  im,  the  verba  irregularia ,  Greek, 
Hebrew,  geography,  mental  arithmetic! — heavens!  my  head  is  still 
dizzy  with  it  —  all  must  be  learned  by  heart !  And  a  great  deal  of  this 
came  very  conveniently  for  me  in  after  life.  For  if  I  had  not  known 
the  Roman  kings  by  heart,  it  would  subsequently  have  been  quite  in¬ 
different  to  me  whether  Niebuhr  had  proved  or  had  not  proved  that 
they  never  really  existed.  .  .  .  But  oh !  the  trouble  I  h'ad  at  school 
with  the  endless  dates.  And  with  arithmetic  it  was  still  worse. 
What  I  understood  best  was  subtraction,  for  that  has  a  very  practical 
rule :  1  Four  can’t  be  taken  from  three,  therefore  I  must  borrow  one.'1 
But  I  advise  every  one  in  such  a  case  to  borrow  a  few  extra  pence,  for 
no  one  can  tell  what  may  happen.  ...  As  for  Latin,  you  have  no 
idea,  madam,  what  a  complicated  affair  it  is.  The  Romans  would 
never  have  found  time  to  conquer  the  world  if  they  had  first  had  to  learn 
Latin.  Luckily  for  them,  they  already  knew  in  their  cradles  what 
nouns  have  their  accusative  in  im.  I,  on  the  contrary,  had  to  learn 
them  by  heart  in  the  sweat  of  my  brow ;  nevertheless,  it  is  fortunate 
for  me  that  I  know  them ;  .  .  .  and  the  fact  that  I  have  them  at  my 
finger-ends  if  I  should  ever  happen  to  want  them  suddenly,  affords  me 
much  inward  repose  aud  consolation  in  many  troubled  hours  of  life. 
.  .  .  Of  Greek  I  will  not  say  a  word,  I  should  get  too  much  irritated. 
The  monks  in  the  Middle  Ages  were  not  so  far  wrong  when  they  main¬ 
tained  that  Greek  was  an  invention  of  the  devil.  God  knows  the  suf¬ 
fering  I  endured  over  it.  .  .  .  With  Hebrew  it  went  somewhat  better, 
for  I  had  always  a  great  liking  for  the  Jews,  though  to  this  very  hour 
they  crucify  my  good  name  ;  but  I  could  never  get  on  so  far  in  Hebrew 
as  my  watch,  which  had  much  familiar  intercourse  with  pawnbrokers, 
and  in  this  way  contracted  many  Jewish  habits,  —  for  example,  it 
would  n’t  go  on  Saturdays.” 

Heine’s  parents  were  apparently  not  wealthy,  hut  his  edu¬ 
cation  was  cared  for  by  his  uncle,  Solomon  Heine,  a  great 
banker  in  Hamburg,  so  that  he  had  no  early  pecuniary  dis¬ 
advantages  to  struggle  with.  He  seems  to  have  been  very 
happy  in  his  mother,  who  was  not  of  Hebrew,  but  of  Teutonic 
blood;  he  often  mentions  her  with  reverence  and  affection, 
and  in  the  “  Buch  der  Lieder  ”  there  are  two  exquisite  sonnets 
addressed  to  her,  which  tell  how  his  proud  spirit  was  always 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE.  75 

subaaed  by  the  charm  of  her  presence,  and  how  her  love  was 
the  home  of  his  heart  after  restless  weary  ramblings ;  — 

“  Wie  macktig  auch  mein  stolzer  Muth  sicli  bliike, 

In  (leiner  selig  siissen,  trauten  Nahe 
Ergreift  micli  oft  eiu  demutlivolles  Zagen. 

Und  immer  irrte  ick  nach  Liebe,  immer 
Nach  Liebe,  dock  die  Liebe  fand  ich  nimmer, 

Und  kekrte  um  nacli  Ilause,  krank  und  triibe. 

Dock  da  bist  du  entgegen  mir  gekommen, 

Und  ach  !  was  da  in  deinem  Aug’  gesckwommen, 

Das  war  die  siisse,  lauggesuchte  Liebe.” 


He  was  at  first  destined  for  a  mercantile  life,  but  nature 
declared  too  strongly  against  this  plan.  “  God  knows,”  he  has 
lately  said  in  conversation  with  his  brother,  “  I  would  will¬ 
ingly  have  become  a  banker,  but  I  could  never  bring  myself 
to  that  pass.  I  very  early  discerned  that  bankers  would  one 
day  be  the  rulers  of  the  world.”  So  commerce  was  at  length 
given  up  for  law,  the  study  of  which  he  began  in  1819  at  the 
University  of  Bonn.  He  had  already  published  some  poems 
in  the  corner  of  a  newspaper,  and  among  them  was  one  on 
Napoleon,  the  object  of  his  youthful  enthusiasm.  This  poem, 
he  says  in  a  letter  to  St.  Rene  Taillandier,  was  written  when 
he  was  only  sixteen.  It  is  still  to  be  found  in  the  “Buck  der 
Lieder  ”  under  the  title  “  Die  Grenadiere,”  and  it  proves  that 
even  in  its  earliest  efforts  his  genius  showed  a  strongly 
specific  character. 

It  will  be  easily  imagined  that  the  germs  of  poetry  sprouted 
too  vigorously  in  Heine’s  brain  for  jurisprudence  to  find 
much  room  there.  Lectures  on  history  and  literature,  we  are 
told,  were  more  diligently  attended  than  lectures  on  law. 
He  had  taken  care,  too,  to  furnish  his  trunk  with  abundant 
editions  of  the  poets,  and  the  poet  he  especially  studied  at 
that  time  was  Byron.  At  a  later  period  we  find  his  taste 
taking  another  direction,  for  he  writes :  “  Of  all  authors, 
Byron  is  precisely  the  one  who  excites  in  me  the  most  intol¬ 
erable  emotion  ;  whereas  Scott,  in  every  one  of  his  works, 


76 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


gladdens  my  heart,  soothes  and  invigorates  me.”  Another 
indication  of  his  bent  in  these  Bonn  days  was  a  newspaper 
essay,  in  which  he  attacked  the  Romanric  School;  and  here 
also  he  went  through  that  chicken-pox  of  authorship,  the 
production  of  a  tragedy.  Heine's  tragedy,  “  Almansor,”  is, 
as  might  be  expected,  better  than  the  majority  of  these 
youthful  mistakes.  The  tragic  collision  lies  in  the  conflict 
between  natural  affection  and  the  deadly  hatred  of  religion 
and  of  race,  in  the  sacrifice  of  youthful  lovers  to  the  strife 
between  Moor  and  Spaniard,  Moslem  and  Christian.  Some 
of  the  situations  are  striking,  and  there  are  passages  of  con¬ 
siderable  poetic  merit;  but  the  characters  are  little  more 
than  shadowy  vehicles  for  the  poetry,  and  there  is  a  want 
of  clearness  and  probability  in  the  structure.  It  was  pub¬ 
lished  two  years  later,  in  company  with  another  tragedy  in 
one  act,  called  “  William  Ratcliffe,”  in  which  there  is  rather 
a  feeble  use  of  the  Scotch  second-sight  after  the  manner  of 
the  Fate  in  the  Greek  tragedy.  We  smile  to  find  Heine  say¬ 
ing  of  his  tragedies,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  soon  after  their 
publication :  “  I  know  they  will  be  terribly  cut  up,  but  I  will 
confess  to  you  in  confidence  that  they  are  very  good,  better 
than  my  collection  of  poems,  which  are  not  worth  a  shot.” 
Elsewhere  he  tells  us,  that  when,  after  one  of  Paganini’s  con 
certs,  he  was  passionately  complimenting  the  great  master  on 
his  violin-playing,  Paganini  interrupted  him  thus :  u  But 
how  were  you  pleased  with  my  bows  ?  ” 

In  1820  Heine  left  Bonn  for  Gottingen.  He  there  pursued 
his  omission  of  law  studies  ;  and  at  the  end  of  three  months 
he  was  rusticated  for  a  breach  of  the  laws  against  duelling. 
Whilst  there  he  had  attempted  a  negotiation  with  Brockhaus 
for  the  printing  of  a  volume  of  poems,  and  had  endured  the 
first  ordeal  of  lovers  and  poets,  a  refusal.  It  was  not  until 
a  year  after,  that  he  found  a  Berlin  publisher  for  his  first 
volume  of  poems,  subsequently  transformed,  with  additions, 
into  the  “  Buch  der  Lieder.”  He  remained  between  two  and 
three  years  at  Berlin,  and  the  society  he  found  there  seems 
to  have  made  these  years  an  important  epoch  in  his  culture. 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


77 


He  was  one  of  the  youngest  members  of  a  circle  which  as¬ 
sembled  at  the  house  of  the  poetess  Elise  von  Hohenhausen, 
the  translator  of  Byron,  a  circle  which  included  Chamisso, 
Varnhagen,  and  Rahel  (Varnhagen’s  wife).  For  Rahel,  Heine 
had  a  profound  admiration  and  regard ;  he  afterwards  dedi¬ 
cated  to  her  the  poems  included  under  the  title  “  Heimkehr ;  ” 
and  he  frequently  refers  to  her  or  quotes  her  in  a  way  that 
indicates  how  he  valued  her  influence.  According  to  his 
friend,  F.  von  Hohenhausen,  the  opinions  concerning  Heine’s 
talent  were  very  various  among  his  Berlin  friends,  and  it  was 
only  a  small  minority  that  had  auy  presentiment  of  his  future 
fame.  In  this  minority  was  Elise  von  Hohenhausen,  who 
proclaimed  Heine  as  the  Byron  of  Germany  ;  but  her  opinion 
was  met  with  much  head-shaking  and  opposition.  We  can 
imagine  how  precious  was  such  a  recognition  as  hers  to  the 
young  poet,  then  only  two  or  three  and  twenty,  and  with  by 
no  means  an  impressive  personality  for  superficial  eyes.  Per¬ 
haps  even  the  deep-sighted  were  far  from  detecting  in  that 
small,  blond,  pale  young  man,  with  quiet,  gentle  manners,  the 
latent  powers  of  ridicule  and  sarcasm  —  the  terrible  talons 
that  were  one  day  to  be  thrust  out  from  the  velvet  paw  of 
the  young  leopard. 

It  was  apparently  during  this  residence  in  Berlin  that 
Heine  united  himself  with  the  Lutheran  Church.  He  would 
willingly,  like  many  of  his  friends,  he  tells  us,  have  remained 
free  from  all  ecclesiastical  ties,  if  the  authorities  there  had  not 
forbidden  residence  in  Prussia,  and  especially  in  Berlin,  to 
every  one  who  did  not  belong  to  one  of  the  positive  religions 
recognized  by  the  state. 

“  As  Henry  IY.  once  laughingly  said,  ‘  Paris  vaut  bien  une  messe ,’ 
jo  I  might  with  reason  say,  Berlin  vaut  bien  une  preche;  and  I  could 
afterwards,  as  before,  accommodate  myself  to  the  very  enlightened 
Christianity,  filtrated  from  all  superstition,  which  could  then  be  had 
in  the  churches  of  Berlin,  and  which  was  even  free  from  the  divinity  of 
Christ,  like  turtle-soup  without  turtle.” 

At  the  same  period,  too,  Heine  became  acquainted  with 
Hegel.  In  his  lately  published  “  Gestandnisse  ”  (Confes- 


78 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


sions),  he  throws  on  Hegel’s  influence  over  him  the  blue  light 
of  demoniacal  wit,  and  confounds  us  by  the  most  bewildering 
double-edged  sarcasms ;  but  that  influence  seems  to  have  been 
at  least  more  wholesome  than  the  one  which  produced  the 
mocking  retractations  of  the  “  Gestandnisse.”  Through  all 
his  self-satire,  we  discern  that  in  those  days  he  had  some¬ 
thing  like  real  earnestness  and  enthusiasm,  wThich  are  cer¬ 
tainly  not  apparent  in  his  present  tlieistic  confession  of 
faith. 

“On  the  whole,  I  never  felt  a  strong  enthusiasm  for  this  philosophy, 
and  conviction  on  the  subject  was  out  of  question.  I  never  was  an 
abstract  thinker,  and  I  accepted  the  synthesis  of  the  Hegelian  doctrine 
without  demanding  any  proof,  since  its  consequences  flattered  my 
vanity.  I  was  young  and  proud;  and  it  pleased  my  vainglory  when  I 
learned  from  Hegel  that  the  true  God  was  not,  as  my  grandmother 
believed,  the  God  who  lives  in  heaven,  but  myself  here  upon  earth. 
This  foolish  pride  had  not  in  the  least  a  pernicious  influence  on  my  feel¬ 
ings  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  heightened  these  to  the  pitch  of  heroism.  I 
was  at  that  time  so  lavish  in  generosity  and  self-sacrifice,  that  I  must 
assuredly  have  eclipsed  the  most  brilliant  deeds  of  those  good  bourgeois 
of  virtue  who  acted  merely  from  a  sense  of  duty,  and  simply  obeyed  the 
laws  of  morality.” 

His  sketch  of  Hegel  is  irresistibly  amusing ;  but  we  must 
warn  the  reader  that  Heine’s  anecdotes  are  often  mere  devices 
of  style  by  which  he  conveys  his  satire  or  opinions.  The 
reader  will  see  that  he  does  not  neglect  an  opportunity  of 
giving  a  sarcastic  lash  or  two,  in  passing,  to  Meyerbeer,  for 
whose  music  he  had  a  great  contempt.  The  sarcasm  conveyed 
in  the  substitution  of  reputation  for  music ,  and  journalists  for 
musicians,  might  perhaps  escape  any  one  unfamiliar  with  the 
sly  and  unexpected  turns  of  Heine’s  ridicule. 

“To  speak  frankly,  I  seldom  understood  him,  and  only  arrived  at 
the  meaning  of  his  words  by  subsequent  reflection.  I  believe  he 
wished  not  to  be  understood  ;  and  hence  his  practice  of  sprinkling  his 
discourse  with  modifying  parentheses ;  hence,  perhaps,  his  preference 
for  persons  of  whom  he  knew  that  they  did  not  understand  him,  and 
to  whom  he  all  the  more  willingly  granted  the  honor  of  his  familiar 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


79 


acquaintance.  Thus  every  one  in  Berlin  wondered  at  the  intimate  com¬ 
panionship  of  the  profound  Hegel  with  the  late  Heinrich  Beer,  a 
brother  of  Giacomo  Meyerbeer,  who  is  universally  known  by  his  rep¬ 
utation,  and  who  has  been  celebrated  by  the  cleverest  journalists.  This 
Beer,  namely  Heinrich,  was  a  thoroughly  stupid  fellow,  and  indeed 
was  afterwards  actually  declared  imbecile  by  his  family,  and  placed 
under  guardianship;  because  instead  of  making  a  name  for  himself  in 
art  or  in  science  by  means  of  his  great  fortune,  he  squandered  his 
money  on  childish  trifles,  —  and,  for  example,  one  day  bought  six 
thousand  thalers’  worth  of  walking-sticks.  This  poor  man,  who  had 
no  wish  to  pass  either  for  a  great  tragic  dramatist,  or  for  a  great  star¬ 
gazer,  or  for  a  laurel-crowned  musical  genius,  a  rival  of  Mozart  and 
Rossini,  and  preferred  giving  his  money  for  walking-sticks  —  this 
degenerate  Beer  enjoyed  Hegel’s  most  confidential  society  ;  he  was  the 
philosopher’s  bosom-friend,  his  Pylades,  and  accompanied  him  every¬ 
where  like  his  shadow.  The  equally  witty  and  gifted  Felix  Mendels¬ 
sohn  once  sought,  to  explain  this  phenomenon,  by  maintaining  that 
Hegel  did  not  understand  Heinrich  Beer.  I  now  believe,  however,  that 
the  real  ground  of  that  intimacy  consisted  in  this  :  Hegel  was  con¬ 
vinced  that  no  word  of  what  he  said  was  understood  by  Heinrich  Beer; 
and  he  could  therefore,  in  his  presence,  give  himself  up  to  all  the  in¬ 
tellectual  outpourings  of  the  moment.  In  general,  Hegel’s  conversa¬ 
tion  was  a  sort  of  monologue,  sighed  forth  by  starts  in  a  noiseless  voice ; 
the  odd  roughness  of  his  expressions  often  struck  me,  and  many  of  them 
have  remained  in  my  memory.  One  beautiful  starlight  evening  we 
stood  together  at  the  window,  and  I,  a  young  man  of  one-and-twenty, 
having  just  had  a  good  dinner  and  finished  my  coffee,  spoke  with  en¬ 
thusiasm  of  the  stars,  and  called  them  the  habitations  of  the  departed. 
But  the  master  muttered  to  himself:  ‘The  stars!  hum!  hum!  The 
stars  are  only  a  brilliant  leprosy  on  the  face  of  the  heavens.’  ‘  For  God’s 
aake,’  I  cried,  ‘  is  there,  then,  no  happy  place  above,  where  virtue  is 
rewarded  after  death  ?  ’  But  he,  staring  at  me  with  his  pale  eyes,  said, 
cuttingly :  ‘  So  you  want  a  bonus  for  having  taken  care  of  your  sick 
mother,  and  refrained  from  poisoniug  your  worthy  brother?’  At  these 
words  he  looked  anxiously  round,  but  appeared  immediately  set  at  rest 
when  he  observed  that  it  was  only  Heinrich  Beer,  who  had  approached 
to  invite  him  to  a  game  at  whist.” 

In  1823  Heine  returned  to  Gottingen  to  complete  his  career 
as  a  law-student,  and  this  time  he  gave  evidence  of  advanced 


80 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


mental  maturity,  not  only  by  producing  many  of  the  charming 
poems  subsequently  included  in  the  “  Reisebilder,”  but  also 
by  prosecuting  his  professional  studies  diligently  enough  to 
leave  Gottingen,  in  1825,  as  Doctor  juris.  Hereupon  he  settled 
at  Hamburg  as  an  advocate,  but  his  profession  seems  to  have 
been  the  least  pressing  of  his  occupations.  In  those  days  a 
small  blond  young  man,  with  the  brim  of  his  hat  drawn  over 
his  nose,  his  coat  flying  open,  and  his  hands  stuck  in  his 
trouser-pockets,  might  have  been  seen  stumbling  along  the 
streets  of  Hamburg,  staring  from  side  to  side,  and  appearing 
to  have  small  regard  to  the  figure  he  made  in  the  eyes  of  the 
good  citizens.  Occasionally  an  inhabitant,  more  literary  than 
usual,  would  point  out  this  young  man  to  his  companion  as 
Heinrich  Heine  ;  but  in  general  the  young  poet  had  not  to 
endure  the  inconveniences  of  being  a  lion.  His  poems  were 
devoured,  but  he  was  not  asked  to  devour  flattery  in  return. 
Whether  because  the  fair  Hamburgers  acted  in  the  spirit  of 
Johnson’s  advice  to  Hannah  More, — to  “  consider  what  her 
flattery  was  worth  before  she  choked  him  with  it,”  —  or  for 
some  other  reason,  Heine,  according  to  the  testimony  of 
August  Lewald,  to  whom  we  owe  these  particulars  of  his 
Hamburg  life,  was  left  free  from  the  persecution  of  tea- 
parties.  Not,  however,  from  another  persecution  of  genius, 
nervous  headaches,  —  which  some  persons,  we  are  told,  re¬ 
garded  as  an  improbable  fiction,  intended  as  a  pretext  for  rais¬ 
ing  a  delicate  white  hand  to  his  forehead.  It  is  probable  that 
the  sceptical  persons  alluded  to  were  themselves  untroubled 
with  nervous  headache,  and  that  their  hands  were  not  delicate. 
Slight  details  these,  but  worth  telling  about  a  man  of  genius, 
because  they  help  us  to  keep  in  mind  that  he  is,  after  all,  our 
brother,  having  to  endure  the  petty  every-day  ills  of  life  as  we 
have ;  with  this  difference,  that  his  heightened  sensibility 
converts  what  are  mere  insect-stings  for  us  into  scorpion- 
stings  for  him. 

It  was,  perhaps,  in  these  Hamburg  days  that  Heine  paid 
the  visit  to  Goethe,  of  which  he  gives  us  this  charming  little 
picture :  — 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


81 


“  When  I  visited  him  in  Weimar,  and  stood  before  him,  I  involun¬ 
tarily  glanced  at  his  side,  to  see  whether  the  eagle  was  not  there  with 
the  lightning  in  his  beak.  I  was  nearly  speaking  Greek  to  him  ;  but, 
as  I  observed  that  he  understood  German,  I  stated  to  him  in  German, 
that  the  plums  on  the  road  between  Jena  and  Weimar  were  very  good. 
I  had  for  so  many  long  winter-nights  thought  over  what  lofty  and  pro¬ 
found  things  I  would  say  to  Goethe,  if  ever  I  saw  him !  And  when  I 
saw  him  at  last,  I  said  to  him,  that  the  Saxon  plums  were  very  good  ! 
And  Goethe  smiled.” 

During  the  next  few  years  Heine  produced  the  most  pop¬ 
ular  of  all  his  works,  those  which  have  won  him  his  place 
as  the  greatest  of  living  German  poets  and  humorists.  Be¬ 
tween  1826  and  1829  appeared  the  four  volumes  of  the 
“  Reisebilder  ”  (Pictures  of  Travel),  and  the  “  Buch  der  Lie- 
der  ”  (Book  of  Songs)  —  a  volume  of  lyrics,  of  which  it  is 
hard  to  say  whether  their  greatest  charm  is  the  lightness  and 
finish  of  their  style,  their  vivid  and  original  imaginativeness, 
or  their  simple,  pure  sensibility.  In  his  “  Reisebilder,” 
Heine  carries  us  with  him  to  the  Harz,  to  the  isle  of  Nor- 
derney,  to  his  native  town,  Diisseldorf,  to  Italy,  and  to  Eng¬ 
land,  sketching  scenery  and  character,  now  with  the  wildest, 
most  fantastic  humor,  now  with  the  finest  idyllic  sensibility 
—  letting  his  thoughts  wander  from  poetry  to  politics,  from 
criticism  to  dreamy  reverie,  and  blending  fun,  imagination, 
reflection,  and  satire  in  a  sort  of  exquisite,  ever-varying 
shimmer,  like  the  hues  of  the  opal. 

Heine’s  journey  to  England  did  not  at  all  heighten  his 
regard  for  the  English.  He  calls  our  language  the  “hiss  of 
egoism  ”  ( Zischlaute  des  Egoismus )  ;  and  his  ridicule  of  Eng¬ 
lish  awkwardness  is  as  merciless  as  English  ridicule  of  Ger¬ 
man  awkwardness.  His  antipathy  towards  us  seems  to  have 
grown  in  intensity,  like  many  of  his  other  antipathies  ;  and 
in  his  “Vermisclite  Scliriften”  he  is  more  bitter  than  ever. 
Let  us  quote  one  of  his  philippics,  since  bitters  are  under¬ 
stood  to  be  wholesome. 

“It  is  certainly  a  frightful  injustice  to  pronounce  sentence  of  con¬ 
demnation  on  an  entire  people.  But  with  regard  to  the  English,  mo 

tol.  ix  6 


82 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


fnentary  disgust  might  betray  me  into  this  injustice ;  and  on  looking 
at  the  mass,  I  easily  forget  the  many  brave  and  noble  men  who  dis¬ 
tinguished  themselves  by  intellect  and  love  of  freedom.  But  these, 
especially  the  British  poets,  were  always  all  the  more  glaringly  in  con 
trast  with  the  rest  of  the  nation  j  they  were  isolated  martyrs  to  their 
national  relations ;  and,  besides,  great  geniuses  do  not  belong  to  the 
particular  land  of  their  birth ;  they  scarcely  belong  to  this  earth,  the 
Golgotha  of  their  sufferings.  The  mass  —  the  English  blockheads, 
God  forgive  me !  —  are  hateful  to  me  in  my  inmost  soul ;  and  I  often 
regard  them  not  at  all  as  my  fellow-men,  but  as  miserable  automata  — 
machines,  whose  motive  power  is  egoism.  Iu  these  moods  it  seems 
to  me  as  if  1  heard  the  whizzing  wheelwork  by  which  they  think,  feel, 
reckon,  digest,  and  pray;  their  praying,  their  mechanical  Anglican 
church -going,  with  the  gilt  prayer-book  under  their  arms,  their  stupid, 
tiresome  Sunday,  their  awkward  piety,  are  most  of  all  odious  to  me. 
I  am  firmly  convinced  that  a  blaspheming  Frenchman  is  a  more  pleas¬ 
ing  sight  for  the  Divinity  than  a  praying  Englishman.” 

On  inis  return  from  England,  Heine  was  employed  at  Mu¬ 
nich  in  editing  the  “  Allgemeinen  Politischen  Annalen,”  but 
in  1830  he  was  again  in  the  North,  and  the  news  of  the  July 
Revolution  surprised  him  on  the  island  of  Heligoland.  He 
has  given  us  a  graphic  picture  of  his  democratic  enthusiasm 
in  those  days,  in  some  letters,  apparently  written  from  Heli¬ 
goland,  which  he  had  inserted  in  his  book  on  Borne.  We 
quote  some  passages,  not  only  for  their  biographic  interest 
as  showing  a  phase  of  Heine’s  mental  history,  but  because 
they  are  a  specimen  of  his  power  in  that  kind  of  dithyram- 
bic  writing  which,  in  less  masterly  hands,  easily  becomes 
ridiculous. 

u  The  thick  packet  of  newspapers  arrived  from  the  Continent  with 
these  warm,  glowing-hot  tidings.  They  were  sunbeams  wrapped  up 
iu  packing-paper,  and  they  inflamed  my  soul  till  it  burst  into  the 
wildest  conflagration.  ...  It  is  all  like  a  dream  to  me  ;  especially 
the  name,  Lafayette,  sounds  to  me  like  a  legend  out  of  my  earliest 
childhood.  Does  he  really  sit  again  on  horseback,  commanding  the 
National  Guard  ?  I  almost  fear  it  may  not  be  true,  for  it  is  iu  print. 
I  will  myself  go  to  Paris,  to  be  convinced  of  it  with  my  bodily  eyes.  .  .  . 
It  must  be  splendid,  when  he  rides  through  the  streets,  the  citizen  of 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


83 


two  worlds,  the  godlike  old  man,  with  his  silver  locks  streaming 
down  his  sacred  shoulder.  ...  He  greets,  with  his  dear  old  eyes,  the 
grandchildren  of  those  who  once  fought  with  him  for  freedom  and 
equality.  ...  It  is  now  sixty  years  since  he  returned  from  America 
with  the  Declaration  of  Human  Rights,  the  Decalogue  of  the  world’s 
new  creed,  which  was  revealed  to  him  amid  the  thunders  and  light¬ 
nings  of  cannon.  .  .  .  And  the  tri -colored  flag  waves  again  on  the 
towers  of  Paris,  and  its  streets  resound  with  the  Marseillaise  !  ...  It 
is  all  over  with  my  yearning  for  repose.  I  now  know  again  what  I  will 
do,  what  I  ought  to  do,  what  I  must  do.  ...  I  am  the  son  of  the 
Revolution,  and  seize  again  the  hallowed  weapons  on  which  my 
mother  pronounced  her  magic  benedictiou.  .  .  .  Flowers,  flowers  ! 
I  will  crown  my  head  for  the  death-fight.  And  the  lyre,  too ;  reach 
me  the  lyre,  that  I  may  sing  a  battle-song.  .  .  .  Words  like  flaming 
stare,  that  shoot  down  from  the  heavens,  and  hunt  up  the  palaces,  and 
illuminate  the  huts.  .  .  .  Words  like  bright  javelins,  that  whirr  up  to 
the  seventh  heaven  and  strike  the  pious  hypocrites  who  have  skulked 
into  the  Holy  of  Holies.  ...  I  am  all  joy  and  song,  all  sword  and 
flame !  Perhaps,  too,  all  delirium.  .  .  .  One  of  Jiose  sunbeams 
wrapped  in  brown  paper  has  flown  to  my  brain,  and  set  my  thoughts 
aglow.  In  vain  I  dip  my  head  into  the  sea.  No  water  extinguishes 
this  Greek  fire.  .  . .  Even  the  poor  Heligolanders  shout  for  joy.  although 
they  have  only  a  sort  of  dim  iustiuct  of  what  has  occurred.  The 
fisherman  who  yesterday  took  me  over  to  tne  little  sand-island,  which 
is  the  bathing-place  here,  said  to  me  smilingly,  ‘  The  poor  people 
have  won!’  Yes,  instinctively  the  people  comprehend  such  events, 
perhaps,  better  than  we,  with  all  our  mean.-  of  knowledge.  Thus 
Frau  von  Varnhageu  once  told  me  that  when  the  issue  of  the  battle, 
of  Leipzig  was  not  yet  known,  the  maid-servant  suddenly  rushed  into 
the  room  with  the  sorrowful  cry,  ‘  The  nobles  have  won  !  ’  .  .  .  This 
morning  another  packet  of  newspapers  is  come.  1  devour  them  like 
manna.  Child  that  I  am,  affecting  details  touch  me  yet  more  than 
the  momentous  whole.  Oh,  if  I  could  but  see  the  dog  Mcdor.  .  .  . 
The  dog  Medor  brought  his  master  his  gun  and  cartridge-box,  and 
when  his  master  fell,  aud  was  buried  with  his  fellow-heroes  in  the 
Court  of  the  Louvre,  there  stayed  the  poor  dog  like  a  monument  of 
faithfulness,  sitting  motionless  on  the  grave,  day  and  night,  eating  but 
little  of  the  food  that  was  offered  him,  — -burying  the  greater  part  of 
it  in  the  earth,  perhaps  as  nourishment  for  his  buried  master.” 


84 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


The  enthusiasm  which  was  kept  thus  at  boiling  heat  by 
imagination,  cooled  down  rapidly  when  brought  into  contact 
with  reality.  In  the  same  book  he  indicates,  in  his  caustic 
way,  the  commencement  of  that  change  in  his  political  tem¬ 
perature —  for  it  cannot  be  called  a  change  in  opinion  — 
which  has  drawn  down  on  him  immense  vituperation  from 
some  of  the  Patriotic  party,  but  which  seems  to  have  resulted 
simply  from  the  essential  antagonism  between  keen  wit  and 
fanaticism. 

“  On  the  very  first  days  of  my  arrival  in  Paris,  I  observed  that 
things  wore,  in  reality,  quite  different  colors  from  those  which  had 
been  shed  on  them,  when  in  perspective,  by  the  light  of  my  enthusiasm. 
The  silver  locks  which  I  saw  fluttering  so  majestically  on  the  shoulders 
of  Lafayette,  the  hero  of  two  worlds,  were  metamorphosed  into  a 
brown  peruke,  which  made  a  pitiable  covering  for  a  narrow  skull. 
And  even  the  dog  Medor,  which  I  visited  in  the  Court  of  the  Louvre, 
and  which,  encamped  under  tri-colored  flags  and  trophies,  very  quietly 
allowed  himself  to  be  fed,  —  he  was  not  at  all  the  right  dog,  but  quite 
an  ordinary  brute,  who  assumed  to  himself  merits  not  his  own,  as 
often  happens  with  the  French  ;  and,  like  many  others,  he  made  a 
profit  out  of  the  glory  of  the  Revolution.  .  .  .  He  was  pampered  and 
patronized,  perhaps  promoted  to  the  highest  posts,  while  the  true 
Medor,  some  days  after  the  battle,  modestly  slunk  out  of  sight,  like 
the  true  people  who  created  the  Revolution.” 

That  it  was  not  merely  interest  in  French  politics  which 
sent  Heine  to  Paris  in  1831,  but  also  a  perception  that  Ger¬ 
man  air  was  not  friendly  to  sympathizers  in  July  Revolutions, 
is  humorously  intimated  in  the  “  Gestandnisse.” 

“  I  had  done  much  and  suffered  much,  and  when  the  sun  of  the  July 
Revolution  arose  in  France,  I  had  become  very  weary  and  needed 
some  recreation.  Also  my  native  air  was  every  day  more  unhealthy 
for  me,  and  it  was  time  I  should  seriously  think  of  a  change  of  cli¬ 
mate.  I  had  visions ;  the  clouds  terrified  me,  and  made  all  sorts  of 
ugly  faces  at  me.  It  ofteu  seemed  to  me  as  if  the  sun  were  a  Prussian 
cockade ;  at  night  I  dreamed  of  a  hideous  black  eagle,  which  gnawed 
my  liver;  and  I  was  very  melancholy.  Add  to  this,  I  had  become 
acquainted  with  an  old  Berlin  Justizrath,  who  had  spent  many  years 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


85 


In  the  fortress  of  Spandau,  and  he  related  to  me  how  unpleasant  it  is 
when  one  is  obliged  to  wear  irons  in  winter.  For  myself  I  thought  it 
very  unchristian  that  the  irons  were  not  warmed  a  trifle.  If  the  irons 
were  warmed  a  little  for  us,  they  would  not  make  so  unpleasant  an  im¬ 
pression,  and  even  chilly  natures  might  then  bear  them  very  well ;  it 
would  be  only  proper  consideration,  too,  if  the  fetters  were  perfumed 
with  essence  of  roses  and  laurels,  as  is  the  case  in  this  country  [France] . 
I  asked  my  Justizrath  whether  he  often  got  oysters  to  eat  at  Spandau. 
He  said,  ‘  No,  Spandau  was  too  far  from  the  sea.’  Moreover,  he  said 
meat  was  very  scarce  there,  and  there  was  no  kind  of  volatile  except 
flies,  which  fell  into  one’s  soup.  .  .  .  Now,  as  I  really  needed  some 
recreation,  and,  as  Spandau  is  too  far  from  the  sea  for  oysters  to  be  got 
there,  and  the  Spandau  fly-soup  did  not  seem  very  appetizing  to  me ; 
as,  besides  all  this,  the  Prussian  chains  are  very  cold  in  winter,  and 
could  not  be  conducive  to  my  health,  I  resolved  to  visit  Paris.” 

Since  this  time  Paris  has  been  Heine’s  home,  and  his  best 
prose  works  have  been  written  either  to  inform  the  Germans 
on  French  affairs,  or  to  inform  the  French  on  German  phi¬ 
losophy  and  literature.  He  became  a  correspondent  of  the 
“Allgeineine  Zeitung,”and  his  correspondence,  which  extends, 
with  an  interruption  of  several  years,  from  1831  to  1844, 
forms  the  volume  entitled  “  Franzosische  Zustiinde  ”  (French 
Affairs),  and  the  second  and  third  volume  of  his  “  Vermischte 
Schriften.”  It  is  a  witty  and  often  wise  commentary  on  pub¬ 
lic  men  and  public  events.  Louis  Philippe,  Casimir  Perier, 
Thiers,  Guizot,  Rothschild,  the  Catholic  party,  the  Socialist 
party,  have  their  turn  of  satire  and  appreciation ;  for  Heine 
deals  out  both  with  an  impartiality  which  made  his  less 
favorable  critics  —  Borne,  for  example  —  charge  him  with 
the  rather  incompatible  sins  of  reckless  caprice  and  venality. 
Literature  and  art  alternate  with  politics :  we  have  now  a 
sketch  of  George  Sand,  or  a  description  of  one  of  Horace  Ver- 
net’s  pictures ;  now  a  criticism  of  Victor  Hugo,  or  of  Liszt ; 
now  an  irresistible  caricature  of  Spontini  or  Kalkbrenner; 
and  occasionally  the  predominant  satire  is  relieved  by  a  fine 
saying,  or  a  genial  word  of  admiration.  And  all  is  done  with 
that  airy  lightness,  yet  precision  of  touch,  which  distinguishes 


ESSAtS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


SB 

Heine  beyon4  any  living  writer.  The  charge  of  venality  was 
loudly  made  against  Heine  in  Germany :  first,  it  was  said 
that  he  was  paid  to  write ;  then,  that  he  was  paid  to  abstain 
from  writing ;  and  the  accusations  were  supposed  to  have  an 
irrefragable  basis  in  the  fact  that  he  accepted  a  stipend  from 
the  French  government.  He  has  never  attempted  to  conceal 
the  reception  of  that  stipend,  and  we  think  his  statement 
(in  the  “Vermischte  Schriften  ”)  of  the  circumstances  under 
which  it  was  offered  and  received,  is  a  sufficient  vindication 
of  himself  and  M.  Guizot  from  any  dishonor  in  the  matter. 

It  may  be  readily  imagined  that  Heine,  with  so  large  a 
share  of  the  Gallic  element  as  he  has  in  his  composition,  was 
soon  at  his  ease  in  Parisian  society,  and  the  years  here  were 
bright  with  intellectual  activity  and  social  enjoyment.  “  His 
wit,”  wrote  August  Lewald,  “is  a  perpetual  gushing  foun¬ 
tain;  he  throws  off  the  most  delicious  descriptions  with 
amazing  facility,  and  sketches  the  most  comic  characters  in 
conversations.”  Such  a  man  could  not  be  neglected  in  Paris, 
and  Heine  was  sought  on  all  sides  —  as  a  guest  in  distin¬ 
guished  salons,  as  a  possible  proselyte  in  the  circle  of  the 
Saint  Simonians.  His  literary  productiveness  seems  to  nave 
been  furthered  by  this  congenial  life,  which,  however,  was 
soon  to  some  extent  embittered  by  the  sense  of  exile ;  for 
since  1835  both  his  works  and  his  person  have  been  the 
object  of  denunciation  by  the  German  governments.  Between 
1833  and  1845  appeared  the  four  volumes  of  the  “Salon,” 
“  Die  Romantische  Schule  ”  (both  written,  in  the  first  in¬ 
stance,  in  French) ;  the  book  on  Borne  ;  “  Atta  Troll,”  a  roman¬ 
tic  poem ;  “  Deutschland,”  an  exquisitely  humorous  poem, 
describing  his  last  visit  to  Germany,  and  containing  some 
grand  passages  of  serious  writing;  and  the  “Neue  Gedichte,” 
a  collection  of  lyrical  poems.  Among  the  most  interesting 
of  his  prose  works  are  the  second  volume  of  the  “  Salon,” 
which  contains  a  survey  of  religion  and  philosophy  in  Ger¬ 
many,  and  the  “  Romantische  Schule,”  a  delightful  introduc¬ 
tion  to  that  phase  of  German  literature  known  as  the 
Romantic  School.  The  book  on  Borne,  which  appeared  in 


GERMAN  WIT  :  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


87 


1840,  two  years  after  the  death  of  that  writer,  excited  great 
indignation  in  Germany,  as  a  wreaking  of  vengeance  on  the 
dead,  an  insult  to  the  memory  of  a  mam  who  had  worked  and 
suffered  in  the  cause  of  freedom  —  a  cause  which  wras  Heine’s 
own.  Borne  —  we  may  observe  parenthetically,  for  the  in¬ 
formation  of  those  who  are  not  familiar  with  recent  German 
literature — was  a  remarkable  political  writer  of  the  ultra¬ 
liberal  party  in  Germany,  who  resided  in  Paris  at  the  same 
time  with  Heine,  a  man  of  stern,  uncompromising  partisan¬ 
ship  and  bitter  humor.  Without  justifying  Heine’s  produc¬ 
tion  of  this  book,  we  see  excuses  for  him  which  should  temper 
the  condemnation  passed  on  it.  There  was  a  radical  opposition 
of  nature  between  him  and  Borne ;  to  use  his  own  distinction, 
Heine  is  a  Hellene  —  sensuous,  realistic,  exquisitely  alive  to 
the  beautiful,  while  Borne  was  a  Nazarene —  ascetic,  spirit¬ 
ualistic,  despising  the  pure  artist  as  destitute  of  earnestness. 
Heine  has  too  keen  a  perception  of  practical  absurdities  and 
damaging  exaggerations  ever  to  become  a  thoroughgoing 
partisan ;  and  with  a  love  of  freedom,  a  faith  in  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  democratic  principles,  of  which  we  see  no  just 
reason  to  doubt  the  genuineness  and  consistency,  he  has  been 
unable  to  satisfy  more  zealous  and  one-sided  liberals  by  giving 
his  adhesion  to  their  views  and  measures,  or  by  adopting  a 
denunciatory  tone  against  those  in  the  opposite  ranks.  Borne 
could  not  forgive  what  he  regarded  as  Heine’s  epicurean  in¬ 
difference  and  artistic  dalliance,  and  he  at  length  gave  vent 
to  his  antipathy  in  savage  attacks  on  him  through  the  press, 
accusing  him  of  utterly  lacking  character  and  principle,  and 
even  of  writing  under  the  influence  of  venal  motives  To 
these  attacks  Heine  remained  absolutely  mute  —  from  con¬ 
tempt,  according  to  his  own  account ;  but  the  retort,  which  he 
resolutely  refrained  from  making  during  Borne’s  life,  comes 
in  this  volume  published  after  his  death,  with  the  concentrated 
force  of  long-gathering  thunder.  The  utterly  inexcusable 
part  of  the  book  is  the  caricature  of  Borne’s  friend,  Madame 
Wohl,  and  the  scurrilous  insinuations  concerning  Borne’s  do¬ 
mestic  life.  It  is  said,  we  know  not  with  how  much  truth, 


88 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


that  Heine  had  to  answer  for  these  in  a  duel  with  Madame 
Wohl’s  husband,  and  that,  after  receiving  a  serious  wound,  he 
promised  to  withdraw  the  offensive  matter  from  a  future 
edition.  That  edition,  however,  has  not  been  called  for. 
Whatever  else  we  may  think  of  the  book,  it  is  impossible  to 
deny  its  transcendent  talent,  the  dramatic  vigor  with  which 
Borne  is  made  present  to  us,  the  critical  acumen  with  which 
he  is  characterized,  and  the  wonderful  play  of  wit,  pathos, 
and  thought  which  runs  through  the  whole.  But  we  will  let 
Heine  speak  for  himself,  and  first  we  will  give  part  of  his 
graphic  description  of  the  way  in  which  Borne’s  mind  and 
manners  grated  on  his  taste :  — 

“  To  the  disgust  which,  in  intercourse  with  Borne,  I  was  in  danger 
of  feeling  towards  those  who  surrounded  him,  was  added  the  annoy¬ 
ance  I  felt  from  his  perpetual  talk  about  politics.  Nothing  but  polit¬ 
ical  argument,  and  again  political  argument,  even  at  table,  where  he 
managed  to  hunt  me  out.  At  dinner,  when  I  so  gladly  forget  all  the 
vexations  of  the  world,  he  spoiled  the  best  dishes  for  me  by  his  patri¬ 
otic  gall,  which  he  poured  as  a  hitter  sauce  over  everything.  Calf  s 
feet  a  la  maitre  d'lidtel ,  then  my  innocent  bonne  bouche,  he  completely 
spoiled  for  me  by  Job’s  tidings  from  Germany,  which  he  scraped  to¬ 
gether  out  of  the  most  unreliable  newspapers.  And  then  his  accursed 
remarks,  which  spoiled  one’s  appetite !  .  .  .  This  was  a  sort  of  table- 
talk  which  did  not  greatly  exhilarate  me,  and  I  avenged  myself  by 
affecting  an  excessive,  almost  impassioned  indifference  for  the  object  of 
Borne’s  enthusiasm.  For  example,  Borne  was  indignant  that  im¬ 
mediately  on  my  arrival  in  Paris,  I  had  nothing  better  to  do  than  to 
write  for  German  papers  a  long  account  of  the  Exhibition  of  Pictures. 
I  omit  all  discussion  as  to  whether  that  interest  in  Art  which  induced 
me  to  undertake  this  work  was  so  utterly  irreconcilable  with  the  Rev¬ 
olutionary  interests  of  the  day ;  but  Borne  saw  in  it  a  proof  of  my 
indifference  towards  the  sacred  cause  of  humanity,  and  I  could  in  my 
turn  spoil  the  taste  of  his  patriotic  sauerkraut  for  him  by  talking  all 
dinner-time  of  nothing  but  pictures,  of  Robert’s  ‘  Reapers,’  Horace 
Vernet’s  ‘Judith,’  and  Scheffer’s  ‘Faust.’  .  .  .  That  I  never  thought 
it  worth  while  to  discuss  my  political  principles  with  him  it  is  needless 
to  say  ;  and  once  when  he  declared  that  he  had  /onnd  a  contradiction 
in  my  writings,  I  satisfied  myself  with  the  ironical  answer,  ‘You  are 
mistaken,  mon  cher;  such  contradictions  never  occur  in  my  works,  for 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


89 


always  before  I  begin  to  write,  I  read  over  the  statement  of  my  polit¬ 
ical  principles  in  my  previous  writings,  that  I  may  not  contradict 
myself,  and  that  no  one  may  be  able  to  reproach  me  with  apostasy 
from  my  liberal  principles.’” 

And  here  is  his  own  account  of  the  spirit  in  which  the 
book  was  written :  — 

u  I  was  never  Borne’s  friend,  nor  was  I  ever  his  enemy.  The  dis¬ 
pleasure  which  he  could  often  excite  in  me  was  never  very  important, 
and  he  atoned  for  it  sufficiently  by  the  cold  silence  which  I  opposed  to 
all  his  accusations  and  raillery.  While  he  lived  I  wrote  not  a  line 
against  him,  I  never  thought  about  him,  I  ignored  him  completely ; 
and  that  enraged  him  beyond  measure.  If  I  now  speak  of  him,  I  do 
eo  neither  out  of  enthusiasm  nor  out  of  uneasiness ;  I  am  conscious  of 
the  coolest  impartiality.  I  write  here  neither  an  apology  nor  a 
critique;  and,  as  in  painting  the  man  I  go  on  my  own  observation,  the 
image  I  present  of  him  ought  perhaps  to  be  regarded  as  a  real  portrait. 
And  such  a  monument  is  due  to  him  —  to  the  great  wrestler  who,  in 
the  arena  of  our  political  games,  wrestled  so  courageously,  and  earned, 
if  not  the  laurel,  certainly  the  crown  of  oak-leaves.  I  give  an  image 
with  his  true  features,  without  idealization  — the  more  like  him,  the 
more  honorable  for  his  memory.  He  was  neither  a  genius  nor  a  hero  ; 
he  was  no  Olympian  god.  He  was  a  man,  a  denizen  of  this  earth  ;  he 
was  a  good  writer  and  a  great  patriot.  .  .  .  Beautiful,  delicious  peace, 
which  I  feel  at  this  moment  in  the  depths  of  my  soul !  Thou  re- 
wardest  me  sufficiently  for  everything  I  have  done  and  for  everything 
I  have  despised.  ...  I  shall  defend  myself  neither  from  the  reproach 
of  indifference  nor  from  the  suspicion  of  venality.  I  have  for  years, 
during  the  life  of  the  insinuator,  held  such  self-justification  unworthy 
of  me ;  now  even  decency  demands  silence.  That  would  be  a  frightful 
spectacle,  —  polemics  between  Death  and  Exile!  Dost  thou  stretch 
out  to  me  a  beseeching  hand  from  the  grave  ?  Without  rancor  I 
reach  mine  towards  thee.  .  .  .  See  how  noble  it  is,  and  pure  !  It  was 
never  soiled  by  pressing  the  hands  of  the  mob,  any  more  than  by  the 
impure  gold  of  the  people’s  enemy.  In  reality  thou  hast  never  injured 
me.  ...  In  all  thy  insinuations  there  is  not  a  louis  d’or’s  worth  of 
truth.” 

In  one  of  these  years  Heine  was  married,  and,  in  deference 
to  the  sentiments  of  his  wife,  married  according  to  the  rites 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


yu 

of  the  Catholic  Church.  On  this  fact  busy  rumor  afterwards 
founded  the  story  of  Ids  conversion  to  Catholicism,  and  could 
of  course  name  the  day  and  the  spot  on  which  he  abjured 
Protestantism.  In  his  “  Gestandnisse  ”  Heine  publishes  a 
denial  of  this  rumor ;  less,  he  says,  for  the  sake  of  depriving 
the  Catholics  of  the  solace  they  may  derive  from  their  belief 
in  a  new  convert,  than  in  order  to  cut  off  from  another  party 
the  more  spiteful  satisfaction  of  bewailing  his  instability :  — 

“  That  statement  of  time  and  place  was  entirely  correct.  I  was 
actually  on  the  specified  day  in  the  specified  church,  which  was,  more¬ 
over,  a  Jesuit  church,  namely  St.  Sulpice  ;  and  I  then  went  through  a 
religious  act.  But  this  act  was  no  odious  abjuration,  hut  a  very  in¬ 
nocent  conjugation  ;  that  is  to  say,  my  marriage,  already  performed 
according  to  the  civil  law,  there  received  the  ecclesiastical  consecration, 
because  my  wife,  whose  family  are  stanch  Catholics,  would  not  have 
thought  her  marriage  sacred  enough  without  such  a  ceremony.  And 
I  would  on  no  account  cause  this  beloved  being  any  uneasiness  or 
disturbance  in  her  religious  views.’7 

For  sixteen  years,  from  1831  to  1847,  Heine  lived  that 
rapid,  concentrated  life  which  is  known  only  in  Paris ;  but 
then,  alas  !  stole  on  the  “  days  of  darkness,”  and  they  were  to 
be  many.  In  1847  he  felt  the  approach  of  the  terrible  spinal 
disease  which  has  for  seven  years  chained  him  to  his  bed  in 
acute  suffering.  The  last  time  he  went  out  of  doors,  he  tells 
us,  was  in  May,  1848  :  — 

“With  difficulty  I  dragged  myself  to  the  Louvre,  and  T  almost  sank 
down  as  I  entered  the  magnificent  hall  where  the  ever-blessed  goddess 
of  beauty,  our  beloved  Lady  of  Milo,  stands  on  her  pedestal.  At  her 
feet  I  lay  long,  and  wept  so  bitterly  that  a  stone  must  have  pitied  me. 
The  goddess  looked  compassionately  on  me,  but  at  the  same  time  dis¬ 
consolately,  as  if  she  would  say  :  Dost  thou  not  see,  then,  that  I  have 
no  arms,  and  thus  cannot  help  thee  ?  ” 

Since  1848,  then,  this  poet,  whom  the  lovely  objects  of 
nature  have  always  “haunted  like  a  passion,”  has  not  de> 
scended  from  the  second  story  of  a  Parisian  house ;  this  man 
of  hungry  intellect  has  been  shut  out  from  all  direct  observe 


HERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


91 


tion  of  life,  all  contact  with  society,  except  such  as  is  de¬ 
rived  from  visitors  to  his  sick-room.  The  terrible  nervous 
disease  has  affected  his  eyes ;  the  sight  of  one  is  utterly  gone, 
and  he  can  only  raise  the  lid  of  the  other  by  lifting  it  with 
his  finger.  Opium  alone  is  the  beneficent  genius  that  stills 
his  pain.  We  hardly  know  whether  to  call  it  an  alleviation 
or  an  intensification  of  the  torture  that  Heine  retains  his 
mental  vigor,  his  poetic  imagination,  and  his  incisive  wit ; 
for  if  this  intellectual  activity  fills  up  a  blank,  it  widens  the 
sphere  of  suffering.  His  brother  described  him  in  1851  as 
still,  in  moments  when  the  hand  of  pain  was  not  too  heavy 
on  him,  the  same  Heinrich  Heine,  poet  and  satirist  by  turns. 
In  such  moments,  he  would  narrate  the  strangest  things  in 
the  gravest  manner.  But  when  he  came  to  an  end,  he  would 
roguishly  lift  up  the  lid  of  his  right  eye  with  his  finger,  to  see 
the  impression  he  had  produced;  and  if  his  audience  had 
been  listening  with  a  serious  face,  he  would  break  into  Ho¬ 
meric  laughter.  We  have  other  proof  than  personal  testimony, 
that  Heine’s  disease  allows  his  genius  to  retain  much  of  its 
energy,  in  the  “  Romanzero,”  a  volume  of  poems  published 
in  1851,  and  written  chiefly  during  the  three  first  years  of  his 
illness ;  and  in  the  first  volume  of  the  “  Vermischte  Schrif- 
ten,”  also  the  product  of  recent  years.  Very  plaintive  is  the 
poet’s  own  description  of  his  condition,  in  the  epilogue  to  the 
“  Romanzero  :  ”  — 

“Do  I  really  exist?  My  body  is  so  shrunken  that  I  am  hardly 
anything  but  a  voice ;  and  my  bed  reminds  me  of  the  singing  grave  of 
the  magician  Merlin,  which  lies  in  the  forest  of  Brozeliand,  in  Brittany, 
under  tall  oaks  whose  tops  soar  like  green  flames  towards  heaven. 
Alas!  I  envy  thee  those  trees  and  the  fresh  breeze  that  moves  their 
branches,  brother  Merlin,  for  no  green  leaf  rustles  about  my  mattress- 
grave  in  Paris,  where  early  and  late  I  hear  nothing  but  the  rolling  of 
vehicles,  hammering,  quarrelliug,  and  piano-strumming.  A  grave 
without  repose,  death  without  the  privileges  of  the  dead,  who  have  no 
debts  to  pay,  and  need  write  neither  letters  nor  books  —  that  is  a  pite¬ 
ous  condition.  Long  ago  the  measure  has  been  taken  for  my  coffin 
and  for  my  necrology,  but  I  die  so  slowly,  that  the  process  is  tedious 


92 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


for  me  as  well  as  my  friends.  But  patience ;  everything  has  an  end 
You  will  one  day  find  the  booth  closed  where  the  puppet-show  of  my 
humor  has  so  often  delighted  you.” 

As  early  as  1850  it  was  rumored,  that  since  Heine’s  illness 
a  change  had  taken  place  in  his  religious  views  ;  and  as  rumor 
seldom  stops  short  of  extremes,  it  was  soon  said  that  he  had 
become  a  thorough  pietist,  Catholics  and  Protestants  by  turns 
claiming  him  as  a  convert.  Such  a  change  in  so  uncompro¬ 
mising  an  iconoclast,  in  a  man  who  had  been  so  zealous  in  his 
negations  as  Heine,  naturally  excited  considerable  sensation 
in  the  camp  he  was  supposed  to  have  quitted,  as  well  as  in 
that  he  was  supposed  to  have  joined.  In  the  second  volume 
of  the  “  Salon  ”  and  in  the  “  Romantische  Schule,”  written 
in  1834  and  1835,  the  doctrine  of  Pantheism  is  dwelt  on  with 
a  fervor  and  unmixed  seriousness  which  show  that  Pantheism 
was  then  an  animating  faith  to  Heine,  and  he  attacks  what 
he  considers  the  false  spiritualism  and  asceticism  of  Christi¬ 
anity  as  the  enemy  of  true  beauty  in  Art,  and  of  social  well¬ 
being.  Now,  however,  it  was  said  that  Heine  had  recanted 
all  his  heresies ;  but  from  the  fact  that  visitors  to  his  sick¬ 
room  brought  away  very  various  impressions  as  to  his  actual 
religious  views,  it  seemed  probable  that  his  love  of  mystifica¬ 
tion  had  found  a  tempting  opportunity  for  exercise  on  this 
subject,  and  that,  as  one  of  his  friends  said,  he  was  not  in¬ 
clined  to  pour  out  unmixed  wine  to  those  who  asked  for  a 
sample  out  of  mere  curiosity.  At  length,  in  the  epilogue  to 
the  “  Romanzero,”  dated  1851,  there  appeared,  amidst  much 
mystifying  banter,  a  declaration  that  he  had  embraced  The¬ 
ism  and  the  belief  in  a  future  life,  and  what  chiefly  lent  an 
air  of  seriousness  and  reliability  to  this  affirmation,  was 
the  fact  that  he  took  care  to  accompany  it  with  certain 
negations  :  — 

11  As  concerns  myself,  I  can  boast  of  no  particular  progress  in  poli¬ 
tics  ;  I  adhered  (after  1848)  to  the  same  democratic  principles  which 
had  the  homage  of  my  youth,  and  for  which  I  have  ever  since  glowed 
with  increasing  fervor.  In  theology,  on  the  contrary,  I  must  accuse 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


93 


myself  of  retrogression,  since,  as  I  have  already  confessed,  I  returned 
to  the  old  superstition  —  to  a  personal  God.  This  fact  is,  once  for  all, 
not  to  he  stifled,  as  many  enlightened  and  well-meaniug  friends  would 
fain  have  had  it.  But  I  must  expressly  contradict  the  report  that  my 
retrograde  movement  has  carried  me  as  far  as  to  the  threshold  of  a 
Church,  and  that  I  have  even  been  received  into  her  lap.  No :  my 
religious  convictions  and  views  have  remained  free  from  any  tincture 
of  ecclesiasticism  ;  no  chiming  of  bells  has  allured  me,  no  altar-candles 
have  dazzled  me.  I  have  dallied  with  no  dogmas,  and  have  not  ut¬ 
terly  renounced  my  reason.” 

This  sounds  like  a  serious  statement.  But  what  shall  we 
say  to  a  convert  who  plays  with  his  newly  acquired  belief  in 
a  future  life,  as  Heine  does  in  the  very  next  page  ?  He  says 
to  his  reader  :  — 

“  Console  thyself;  we  shall  meet  again  in  a  better  world,  where  I 
also  mean  to  write  thee  better  books.  I  take  for  granted  that  my 
health  will  there  be  improved,  and  that  Swedenborg  has  not  deceived 
me.  He  relates,  namely,  with  great  confidence,  that  we  shall  peace¬ 
fully  carry  on  our  old  occupations  in  the  other  world,  just  as  we  have 
done  in  this ;  that  we  shall  there  preserve  our  individuality  unaltered, 
and  that  death  will  produce  no  particular  change  in  our  organic  devel¬ 
opment.  Swedenborg  is  a  thoroughly  honorable  fellow,  and  quite 
worthy  of  credit  in  what  he  tells  us  about  the  other  world,  where  he 
saw  with  his  own  eyes  the  persons  who  had  played  a  great  part  on  our 
earth.  Most  of  them,  he  says,  remained  unchanged,  and  busied  them¬ 
selves  with  the  same  things  as  formerly;  they  remained  stationary, 
were  old-fashioned,  rococo  —  which  now  and  then  produced  a  ludicrous 
effect.  For  example,  our  dear  Dr.  Martin  Luther  kept  fast  by  his  doc¬ 
trine  of  Grace,  about  which  he  had  for  three  hundred  years  daily  writ¬ 
ten  down  the  same  mouldy  arguments;  just  in  the  same  way  as  the 
late  Baron  Ekstein,  who  during  twenty  years  printed  in  the  u  Alle- 
meine  Zeitung”one  and  the  same  article,  perpetually  chewing  over 
again  the  old  cud  of  Jesuitical  doctrine.  But,  as  we  have  said,  all  per¬ 
sons  who  once  figured  here  below  were  not  fouud  by  Swedeuborg  in  such 
a  state  of  fossil  immutability ;  many  had  considerably  developed  their 
character,  both  for  good  and  evil,  in  the  other  world,  and  this  gave  rise 
to  some  singular  results.  Some  who  had  been  heroes  and  saints  on  earth 
had  there  sunk  into  scamps  and  good-for-nothings;  and  there  were 


94 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


examples,  too,  of  a  contrary  transformation.  For  instance,  the  fumes  of 
self-conceit  mounted  to  Saint  Anthony’s  head  when  he  learned  what 
immense  veneration  and  adoration  had  been  paid  to  him  by  all  Chris 
tendom ;  and  he  who  here  below  withstood  the  most  terrible  tempta¬ 
tions,  was  now  quite  an  impertinent  rascal  and  dissolute  gallows-bird, 
who  vied  with  his  pig  in  rolling  himself  in  the  mud.  The  chaste 
Susanna,  from  having  been  excessively  vain  of  her  virtue,  which  she 
thought  indomitable,  came  to  a  shameful  fall,  and  she  who  once  so 
gloriously  resisted  the  two  old  men,  was  a  victim  to  the  seductions  of 
the  young  Absalom,  the  son  of  David.  On  the  contrary,  Lot’s 
daughters  had  iu  the  lapse  of  time  become  very  virtuous,  and  passed  in 
the  other  world  for  models  of  propriety  ;  the  old  man,  alas  !  had  stuck 
to  the  wine-flask.” 

In  his  “  Gestandnisse  ”  the  retraction  of  former  opinions 
and  profession  of  Theism  are  renewed,  but  in  a  strain  of  irony 
that  repels  our  sympathy  and  baffles  our  psychology.  Yet 
what  strange,  deep  pathos  is  mingled  with  the  audacity  of 
the  following  passage  :  — 

“  What  avails  it  me,  that  enthusiastic  youths  and  maidens  crown 
my  marble  bust  with  laurel,  when  the  withered  hands  of  an  aged  nurse 
are  pressing  Spanish  flies  behind  my  ears  ?  What  avails  it  me,  that 
all  the  roses  of  Shiraz  glow  and  waft  incense  for  me  ?  Alas !  Shiraz 
is  two  thousand  miles  from  the  Rue  d’ Amsterdam,  where,  in  the  weari¬ 
some  loneliness  of  my  sick-room,  I  get  no  scent,  except  it  be,  perhaps- 
the  perfume  of  warmed  towels.  Alas  !  God’s  satire  weighs  heavily  on 
me.  The  great  Author  of  the  universe,  the  Aristophanes  of  Heaven, 
was  bent  on  demonstrating,  with  crushing  force,  to  me,  the  little, 
earthly,  German  Aristophanes,  how  my  wittiest  sarcasms  are  only  piti¬ 
ful  attempts  at  jesting  in  comparison  with  His,  and  how  miserably  1 
am  beneath  him  in  humor,  in  colossal  mockery.” 

For  our  own  part,  we  regard  the  paradoxical  irreverence 
with  which  Heine  professes  his  theoretical  reverence  as  patho¬ 
logical,  as  the  diseased  exhibition  of  a  predominant  tendency, 
urged  into  anomalous  action  by  the  pressure  of  pain  and  men¬ 
tal  privation,  as  the  delirium  of  wit  starved  of'  its  proper 
nourishment.  It  is  not  for  us  to  condemn,  who  have  never 
had  the  same  burden  laid  on  us ;  it  is  not  for  pygmies  at 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


95 


their  ease  to  criticise  the  writhings  of  the  Titan  chained  to 
the  rock. 

On  one  other  point  we  must  touch  before  quitting  Heine's 
personal  history.  There  is  a  standing  accusation  against  him, 
in  some  quarters,  of  wanting  political  principle,  of  wishing  to 
denationalize  himself,  and  of  indulging  in  insults  against  his 
native  country.  Whatever  ground  may  exist  for  these  accu¬ 
sations,  that  ground  is  not,  so  far  as  we  see,  to  be  found  in 
his  writings.  He  may  not  have  much  faith  in  German  revo¬ 
lutions  and  revolutionists ;  experience,  in  his  case  as  in  that 
of  others,  may  have  thrown  his  millennial  anticipations  into 
more  distant  perspective ;  but  we  see  no  evidence  that  he  has 
ever  swerved  from  his  attachment  to  the  principles  of  freedom, 
or  written  anything  which  to  a  philosophic  mind  is  incompati¬ 
ble  with  true  patriotism.  He  has  expressly  denied  the  report 
that  he  wished  to  become  naturalized  in  Trance  ;  and  his  yearn¬ 
ing  towards  his  native  land  and  the  accents  of  his  native  lan¬ 
guage  is  expressed  with  a  pathos  the  more  reliable  from  the 
fact  that  he  is  sparing  in  such  effusions.  We  do  not  see  why 
Heine’s  satire  of  the  blunders  and  foibles  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen  should  be  denounced  as  the  crime  of  lese-patrie, 
any  more  than  the  political  caricatures  of  any  other  satirist. 
The  real  offences  of  Heine  are  his  occasional  coarseness  and 
his  unscrupulous  personalities,  which  are  reprehensible,  not 
because  they  are  directed  against  his  fellow-countrymen,  but 
because  they  are  personalities.  That  these  offences  have 
their  precedents  in  men  whose  memory  the  world  delights  to 
honor  does  not  remove  their  turpitude,  but  it  is  a  fact  which 
should  modify  our  condemnation  in  a  particular  case  ;  unless, 
indeed,  we  are  to  deliver  our  judgments  on  a  principle  of 
compensation,  making  up  for  our  indulgence  in  one  direc¬ 
tion  by  our  severity  in  another.  On  this  ground  of  coarse¬ 
ness  and  personality,  a  true  bill  may  be  found  against 
Heine;  not ,  we  think,  on  the  ground  tha^  he  has  laughed  at 
what  is  laughable  in  his  compatriots.  Here  is  a  speci¬ 
men  of  the  satire  under  which  we  suppose  German  patriots 
wince :  — 


96 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


“  Rhenish  Bavaria  was  to  be  the  starting-point  of  the  German  Rev¬ 
olution.  Zweibriicken  was  the  Bethlehem  in  which  the  infant  Saviour 
— Freedom  —  lay  in  the  cradle,  and  gave  whimpering  promise  of  re¬ 
deeming  the  world.  Near  his  cradle  bellowed  many  an  ox,  who  after¬ 
wards,  when  his  horns  were  reckoned  on,  showed  himself  a  very 
harmless  brute.  It  was  confidently  believed  that  the  German  Revolu¬ 
tion  would  begin  in  Zweibriicken,  and  everything  was  there  ripe  for  an 
outbreak.  But,  as  has  been  hinted,  the  tender-heartedness  of  some 
persons  frustrated  that  illegal  undertaking.  For  example,  among  the 
Bipontine  conspirators  there  was  a  tremendous  braggart,  who  was 
always  loudest  in  his  rage,  who  boiled  over  with  the  hatred  of  tyranny ; 
and  this  man  was  fixed  on  to  strike  the  first  blow,  by  cutting  down  a 
sentinel  who  kept  an  important  post.  .  .  .  ‘  What !  ’  cried  the  man, 
when  this  order  was  given  him  —  ‘  What !  —  me !  Can  you  expect  so 
horrible,  so  bloodthirsty  an  act  of  me?  I  —  I,  kill  an  innocent  sentinel? 
I,  who  am  the  father  of  a  family  !  And  this  sentinel  is  perhaps  also 
father  of  a  family.  One  father  of  a  family  kill  another  father  of  a 
family?  Yes!  Kill  —  murder!’” 

In  political  matters,  Heine,  like  all  men  whose  intellect 
and  taste  predominate  too  far  over  their  impulses  to  allow  of 
their  becoming  partisans,  is  offensive  alike  to  the  aristocrat 
and  the  democrat.  By  the  one  he  is  denounced  as  a  man 
who  holds  incendiary  principles;  by  the  other  as  a  half¬ 
hearted  “trimmer.”  He  has  no  sympathy,  as  he  says,  with 
“  that  vague,  barren  pathos,  that  useless  effervescence  of  en¬ 
thusiasm,  which  plunges,  with  the  spirit  of  a  martyr,  into  an 
ocean  of  generalities,  and  which  always  reminds  me  of  the 
American  sailor,  who  had  so  fervent  an  enthusiasm  for 
General  Jackson,  that  he  at  last  sprang  from  the  top  of  a 
mast  into  the  sea,  crying,  ‘I  die  for  General  Jackson  /’  ” 

“  But  thou  best,  Brutus,  thou  liest,  Cassius,  and  thou,  too,  lieat, 
Asinius,  in  maintaining  that  my  ridicule  attacks  those  ideas  which  are 
the  precious  acquisition  of  Humanity,  and  for  which  I  myself  have  so 
striven  and  suffered.  No!  for  the  very  reason  that  those  ideas  con¬ 
stantly  hover  before  the  poet  in  glorious  splendor  and  majesty,  he  is 
the  more  irresistibly  overcome  by  lau<  ’hter  when  he  sees  how  rudely, 
awkwardly,  and  clumsily  those  ideas  seized  and  mirrored  in  the 
contracted  minds  of  contemporaries.  .  .  .  There  are  mirrors  which 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


97 


have  so  rough  a  surface  that  even  an  Apollo  reflected  in  them  becomes 
a  caricature  and  excites  our  laughter.  But  we  laugh  then  only  at  the 
caricature ,  not  at  the  god.” 

For  the  rest,  why  should  we  demand  of  Heine  that  he 
should  be  a  hero,  a  patriot,  a  solemn  prophet,  any  more  than 
we  should  demand  of  a  gazelle  that  it  should  draw  well  in 
harness?  Nature  has  not  made  him  of  her  sterner  stuff  — 
not  of  iron  and  adamant,  but  of  pollen  of  flowers,  the  juice  of 
the  grape,  and  Puck’s  mischievous  brain,  plenteously  mixing 
also  the  dews  of  kindly  affection  and  the  gold-dust  of  noble 
thoughts.  It  is,  after  all,  a  tribute  which  his  enemies  pay 
him  when  they  utter  their  bitterest  dictum,  namely,  that  he 
is  “  nur  Dichter  ”  —  only  a  poet.  Let  us  accept  this  point  of 
view  for  the  present,  and,  leaving  all  consideration  of  him  as 
a  man,  look  at  him  simply  as  a  poet  and  literary  artist. 

Heine  is  essentially  a  lyric  poet.  The  finest  products  of 
his  genius  are 

“  Short  swallow-flights  of  song,  that  dip 
Their  wings  in  tears,  and  skim  away  ;  ” 

and  they  are  so  emphatically  songs  that,  in  reading  them,  we 
feel  as  if  each  must  have  a  twin  melody  born  in  the  same 
moment  and  by  the  same  inspiration.  Heine  is  too  impres¬ 
sible  and  mercurial  for  any  sustained  production  ;  even  in 
his  short  lyrics  his  tears  sometimes  pass  into  laughter,  and 
his  laughter  into  tears ;  and  his  longer  poems,  “  Atta  Troll  ” 
and  “  Deutschland,”  are  full  of  Ariosto-like  transitions.  His 
song  has  a  wide  compass  of  notes ;  he  can  take  us  to  the 
shores  of  the  Northern  Sea  and  thrill  us  by  the  sombre  sub¬ 
limity  of  his  pictures  and  dreamy  fancies ;  he  can  draw  forth 
our  tears  by  the  voice  he  gives  to  our  own  sorrows,  or  to  the 
sorrows  of  “  Poor  Peter ;  ”  he  can  throw  a  cold  shudder  over 
us  by  a  mysterious  legend,  a  ghost  story,  or  a  still  more 
ghastly  rendering  of  hard  reality ;  he  can  charm  us  by  a  quiet 
idyl,  shake  us  with  laughter  at  his  overflowing  fun,  or  give 
us  a  piquant  sensation  of  surprise  by  the  ingenuity  of  his 
transitions  from  the  lofty  to  the  ludicrous.  This  last  power 

TOL.  IX.  7 


98 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


is  not,  indeed,  essentially  poetical ;  but  only  a  poet  can  use  it 
with  the  same  success  as  Heine,  for  only  a  poet  can  poise  our 
emotion  and  expectation  at  such  a  height  as  to  give  effect  to 
the  sudden  fall.  Heine’s  greatest  power  as  a  poet  lies  in  his 
simple  pathos,  in  the  ever-varied  but  always  natural  expres¬ 
sion  he  has  given  to  the  tender  emotions.  We  may  perhaps 
indicate  this  phase  of  his  genius  by  referring  to  Wordsworth’s 
beautiful  little  poem,  “  She  dwelt  among  the  untrodden 
ways ;  ”  the  conclusion  — 

“  She  dwelt  alone,  and  few  could  know 

When  Lucy  ceased  to  be  ; 

But  she  is  in  her  grave,  and,  oh ! 

The  difference  to  me  ”  — 

is  entirely  in  Heine’s  manner ;  and  so  is  Tennyson’s  poem  of  a 
dozen  lines,  called  “  Circumstance.”  Both  these  poems  have 
Heine’s  pregnant  simplicity.  But,  lest  this  comparison 
should  mislead,  we  must  say  that  there  is  no  general  resem¬ 
blance  between  either  Wordsworth,  or  Tennyson,  and  Heine. 
Their  greatest  qualities  lie  quite  away  from  the  light,  del¬ 
icate  lucidity,  the  easy,  rippling  music,  of  Heine’s  style. 
The  distinctive  charm  of  his  lyrics  may  best  be  seen  by  com¬ 
paring  them  with  Goethe’s.  Both  have  the  same  masterly, 
finished  simplicity  and  rhythmic  grace ;  but  there  is  more 
thought  mingled  with  Goethe’s  feeling.  His  lyrical  genius 
is  a  vessel  that  draws  more  water  than  Heine’s,  and,  though 
it  seems  to  glide  along  with  equal  ease,  we  have  a  sense 
of  greater  weight  and  force  accompanying  the  grace  of  its 
movement. 

But,  for  this  very  reason,  Heine  touches  our  hearts  more 
strongly ;  his  songs  are  all  music  and  feeling ;  they  are  like 
birds,  that  not  only  enchant  us  with  their  delicious  notes,  but 
nestle  against  us  with  their  soft  breasts,  and  make  us  feel  the 
agitated  beating  of  their  hearts.  He  indicates  a  whole  sad 
history  in  a  single  quatrain ;  there  is  not  an  image  in  it,  not 
a  thought;  but  it  is  beautiful,  simple,  and  perfect  as  a  “big 
round  tear ;  ”  it  is  pure  feeling  breathed  in  pure  music :  — 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


99 


“  Anfangs  wollt’  ich  fast  verzagen 
Uutl  ich  glaubt’  ich  trug  es  nie, 

Und  ich  hab’  es  doch  getragen,  — 

Aber  fragt  raich  nur  nicht,  wie.”  1 

He  excel3  equally  in  the  more  imaginative  expression  of 
feeling ;  he  represents  it  by  a  brief  image,  like  a  finely  cut 
cameo ;  he  expands  it  into  a  mysterious  dream,  or  dramatizes 
it  in  a  little  story,  half-ballad,  half-idyl ;  and  in  all  these 
forms  his  art  is  so  perfect  that  we  never  have  a  sense  of  ar¬ 
tificiality  or  of  unsuccessful  effort,  but  all  seems  to  have 
developed  itself  by  the  same  beautiful  necessity  that  brings 
forth  vine-leaves  and  grapes  and  the  natural  curls  of  child¬ 
hood.  Of  Heine’s  humorous  poetry,  “Deutschland”  is  the 
most  charming  specimen  —  charming,  especially,  because  its 
wit  and  humor  grow  out  of  a  rich  loam  of  thought.  “  Atta 
Troll  ”  is  more  original,  more  various,  more  fantastic  ;  but  it 
ts  too  great  a  strain  on  the  imagination  to  be  a  general 
favorite.  We  have  said  that  feeling  is  the  element  in  which 
Heine’s  poetic  genius  habitually  floats ;  but  he  can  occasionally 
soar  to  a  higher  region,  and  impart  deep  significance  to  pict¬ 
uresque  symbolism  ;  he  can  flash  a  sublime  thought  over  the 
past  and  into  the  future ;  he  can  pour  forth  a  lofty  strain  of 
hope  or  indignation.  Few  could  forget,  after  once  hearing 
them,  the  stanzas  at  the  close  of  “  Deutschland,”  in  which  he 
warns  the  King  of  Prussia  not  to  incur  the  irredeemable  hell 
which  the  injured  poet  can  create  for  him,  the  singing  flames 
of  a  Dante’s  terza  rima  ! 

u  Kennst  du  die  Hblle  des  Dante  nicht, 

Die  schrecklichen  Terzetten  7 
Wen  da  der  Dichter  hineingesperrt 
Den  kann  kein  Gott  melir  retten. 

“  Kein  Gott,  kein  Heiland,  erlost  ihn  je 
Aus  diesen  singenden  flammen  ! 

Nimm  dich  in  Acht,  das  wir  dich  nicht 
Zu  solcher  Ilblle  verdamraen.”  2 

1  At  first  I  was  almost  in  despair,  and  I  thought  I  could  never  bear  it 
and  yet  I  have  borne  it,  —  only  do  not  ask  me  how  ? 

-  It  is  not  fair  to  the  English  reader  to  indulge  in  German  quotations, 
but  in  our  opinion  poetical  translations  are  usually  worse  than  valueless. 


100 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


As  a  prosaist,  Heine  is,  in  one  point  of  view,  even  more 
distinguished  than  as  a  poet.  The  German  language  easily 
lends  itself  to  all  the  purposes  of  poetry ;  like  the  ladies  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  it  is  gracious  and  compliant  to  the  Trouba¬ 
dours.  But  as  these  same  ladies  were  often  crusty  and  re¬ 
pulsive  to  their  unmusical  mates,  so  the  German  language 
generally  appears  awkward  and  unmanageable  in  the  hands  of 
prose-writers.  Indeed,  the  number  of  really  fine  German  pro¬ 
saists  before  Heine  would  hardly  have  exceeded  the  numerat¬ 
ing  powers  of  a  New  Hollander,  who  can  count  three  and  no 
more.  Persons  the  most  familiar  with  German  prose  testify 
that  there  is  an  extra  fatigue  in  reading  it,  just  as  we  feel  an 
sxtra  fatigue  from  our  walk  when  it  takes  us  over  ploughed 
clay.  But  in  Heine’s  hands  German  prose,  usually  so  heavy, 
so  clumsy,  so  dull,  becomes  like  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  chem¬ 
ist,  compact,  metallic,  brilliant ;  it  is  German  in  an  allotropic 
condition.  No  dreary  labyrinthine  sentences  in  which  you 
find  “  no  end  in  wandering  mazes  lost ;  n  no  chains  of  adjec¬ 
tives  in  linked  harshness  long  drawn  out;  no  digressions 
thrown  in  as  parentheses ;  but  crystalline  definiteness  and 
clearness,  fine  and  varied  rhythm,  and  all  that  delicate  preci¬ 
sion,  all  those  felicities  of  word  and  cadence,  which  belong  to 
the  highest  order  of  prose.  And  Heine  has  proved  —  what 
Madame  de  Stael  seems  to  have  doubted  —  that  it  is  possible 
to  be  witty  in  German ;  indeed,  in  reading  him,  you  might 
imagine  that  German  was  pre-eminently  the  language  of  wit, 
so  flexible,  so  subtle,  so  piquant  does  it  become  under  his 
management.  He  is  far  more  an  artist  in  prose  than  Goethe. 
He  has  not  the  breadth  and  repose,  and  the  calm  development 
which  belong  to  Goethe’s  style,  for  they  are  foreign  to  his 
mental  character ;  but  he  excels  Goethe  in  susceptibility  to 
the  manifold  qualities  of  prose,  and  in  mastery  over  its 


For  those  who  think  differently,  however,  we  may  mention  that  Mr.  Stores 
Smith  has  published  a  modest  little  book,  containing  “  Selections  from  the 
Poetry  of  Heinrich  Heine,”  and  that  a  meritorious  (American)  translation 
of  Heine’s  complete  works,  by  Charles  Letand,  is  now  appearing  in  shilling 
numbers. 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


101 


effects.  Heine  is  full  of  variety,  of  light  and  shadow ;  he 
alternates  between  epigrammatic  pith,  imaginative  grace,  sly 
allusion,  and  daring  piquancy ;  and  athwart  all  these  there 
runs  a  vein  of  sadness,  tenderness,  and  grandeur,  which  reveals 
the  poet.  He  continually  throws  out  those  finely  chiselled 
sayings  which  stamp  themselves  on  the  memory,  and  become 
familiar  by  quotation.  For  example  :  “  The  people  have  time 
enough,  they  are  immortal ;  kings  only  are  mortal.”  — 
“Wherever  a  great  soul  utters  its  thoughts,  there  is  Gol¬ 
gotha.”  —  “  Nature  wanted  to  see  how  she  looked,  and  she 
created  Goethe.”  —  “  Only  the  man  who  has  known  bodily 
suffering  is  truly  a  man ;  his  limbs  have  their  Passion  history, 
they  are  spiritualized.”  He  calls  Eubens  “  this  Flemish  Ti¬ 
tan,  the  wings  of  whose  genius  were  so  strong  that  he  soared 
as  high  as  the  sun,  in  spite  of  the  hundred-weight  of  Dutch 
cheeses  that  hung  on  his  legs.”  Speaking  of  Borne’s  dislike 
to  the  calm  creations  of  the  true  artist,  he  says  :  “  He  was 
like  a  child  which,  insensible  to  the  glowing  significance  of  a 
Greek  statue,  only  touches  the  marble  and  complains  of 
cold.” 

The  most  poetic  and  specifically  humorous  of  Heine  s  prose 
writings  are  the  “  Eeisebilder.”  The  comparison  with  Sterne 
is  inevitable  here ;  but  Heine  does  not  suffer  from  it,  for  if 
he  falls  below  Sterne  in  raciness  of  humor,  he  is  far  above 
him  in  poetic  sensibility  and  in  reach  and  variety  of  thought. 
Heine’s  humor  is  never  persistent,  it  never  flows  on  long  in 
easy  gayety  and  drollery ;  where  it  is  not  swelled  by  the  tide 
of  poetic  feeling,  it  is  continually  dashing  down  the  precipice 
of  a  witticism.  It  is  not  broad  and  unctuous ;  it  is  aerial  and 
sprite-like,  a  momentary  resting-place  between  his  poetry  and 
his  wit.  In  the  “Eeisebilder”  he  runs  through  the  whole 
gamut  of  his  powers,  and  gives  us  every  hue  of  thought,  from 
the  wflldly  droll  and  fantastic  to  the  sombre  and  the  terrible. 
Here  is  a  passage  almost  Dantesque  in  conception  :  — 


“Alas!  one  ought  in  truth  to  write  agaiust  no  one  in  this  world. 
Each  of  us  is  sick  enough  in  this  great  lazaretto,  and  many  a  poleini 


102 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


cal  writing  reminds  me  involuntarily  of  a  revolting  quarrel,  in  a  little 
hospital  at  Cracow,  of  which  I  chanced  to  he  a  witness,  and  where  it 
was  horrible  to  hear  how  the  patients  mockingly  reproached  each  other 
with  their  infirmities :  how  one  who  was  wasted  by  consumption 
jeered  at  another  who  was  bloated  by  dropsy ;  how  one  laughed  at 
another’s  cancer  in  the  nose,  and  this  one  again  at  his  neighbor’s 
locked  jaw  or  squint;  until  at  last  the  delirious  fever-patient  sprang 
out  of  bed  and  tore  away  the  coverings  from  the  wounded  bodies  of  his 
companions,  and  nothing  was  to  be  seen  but  hideous  misery  and 
mutilation.” 

And  how  fine  is  the  transition  in  the  very  next  chapter, 
where,  after  quoting  the  Homeric  description  of  the  feasting 
gods,  he  says  :  — 

“Then  suddenly  approached,  panting,  a  pale  Jew,  with  drops  of 
blood  on  his  brow,  with  a  crown  of  thorns  on  his  head,  and  a  great 
cross  laid  on  his  shoulders ;  and  he  threw  the  cross  on  the  high  table 
of  the  gods,  so  that  the  golden  cups  tottered,  and  the  gods  became 
dumb  and  pale,  and  grew  ever  paler,  till  they  at  last  melted  away  into 
vapor.” 

The  richest  specimens  of  Heine’s  wit  are  perhaps  to  be 
found  in  the  works  which  have  appeared  since  the  “  Reise- 
bilder.”  The  years,  if  they  have  intensified  his  satirical  bit¬ 
terness,  have  also  given  his  wit  a  finer  edge  and  polish.  His 
sarcasms  are  so  subtly  prepared  and  so  slyly  allusive,  that 
they  may  often  escape  readers  whose  sense  of  wit  is  not  very 
acute ;  but  for  those  who  delight  in  the  subtle  and  delicate 
flavors  of  style,  there  can  hardly  be  any  wit  more  irresistible 
than  Heine’s.  We  may  measure  its  force  by  the  degree  in 
which  it  has  subdued  the  German  language  to  its  purposes, 
and  made  that  language  brilliant  in  spite  of  a  long  hereditary 
transmission  of  dulness.  As  one  of  the  most  harmless  exam¬ 
ples  of  his  satire,  take  this  on  a  man  who  has  certainly  had 
his  share  of  adulation :  — 

u  Assuredly  it  is  far  from  my  purpose  to  depreciate  M.  Victor  Cousin. 
The  titles  of  this  celebrated  philosopher  even  lay  me  under  an  obliga¬ 
tion  to  praise  him.  He  belongs  to  that  living  pantheon  of  France, 
which  we  call  the  peerage,  and  his  intelligent  legs  rest  on  the  velvet 


GERMAN  WIT:  HEINRICH  HEINE. 


103 


benches  of  the  Luxembourg.  I  must  indeed  sternly  repress  all  private 
feelings  which  might  seduce  me  into  an  excessive  enthusiasm.  Other¬ 
wise  1  might  be  suspected  of  servility ;  for  M.  Cousin  is  very  influen¬ 
zal  in  the  state  by  means  of  his  position  and  his  tongue.  This 
consideration  might  even  move  me  to  speak  of  his  faults  as  frankly  as 
of  his  virtues.  Will  he  himself  disapprove  of  this1?  Assuredly  not. 
I  know  that  we  cannot  do  higher  honor  to  great  minds  than  when  we 
throw  as  strong  a  light  on  their  demerits  as  on  their  merits.  When 
we  sing  the  praises  of  a  Hercules,  we  must,  also  mention  that  he  once 
laid  aside  the  lion’s  skin  and  sat  down  to  the  distaff :  what  then  f  be 
remains  notwithstanding  a  Hercules  !  So  when  we  relate  similar  cir¬ 
cumstances  concerning  M.  Cousin,  we  must  nevertheless  add,  with  dis¬ 
criminating  eulogy  •  M.  Cousin,  if  he  has  sometimes  sat  twaddling  at  the 
distaff,  has  never  laid  aside  the  lion's  skin.  ...  It  is  true  that,  having 
been  suspected  of  demagogy,  he  spent  some  time  in  a  German  prison, 
just  as  Lafayette  and  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion.  But  that  M.  Cousin 
there  in  his  leisure  hours  studied  Kant’s  ‘  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  ’  is 
to  be  doubted  on  three  grounds.  First,  this  book  is  written  in  Ger¬ 
man.  Secondly,  in  order  to  read  this  book,  a  man  must  understand 
German.  Thirdly,  M.  Cousin  does  not  understand  German.  ...  I 
fear  I  am  passiug  unawares  from  the  sweet  waters  of  praise  into  the 
bitter  ocean  of  blame.  Yes,  on  one  account  I  cannot  refrain  from  bit¬ 
terly  blaming  M.  Cousin,  —  namely,  that  he  who  loves  truth  far  more 
than  he  loves  Plato  and  Tenneman,  is  unjust  to  himself  when  he  wants 
to  persuade  us  that  he  has  borrowed  something  from  the  philosophy 
of  Schelliug  and  Hegel.  Against  this  self-accusation,  I  must  take 
M.  Cousin  under  my  protection.  On  my  word  and  conscience,  this 
honorable  man  has  not  stolen  a  jot  from  Schelling  and  Hegel,  and  if  he 
brought  home  anything  of  theirs,  it  was  merely  their  friendship.  That 
does  honor  to  his  heart.  But  there  are  many  instances  of  such  false 
self-accusation  in  psychology.  I  knew  a  man  who  declared  that  he  had 
stolen  silver  spoons  at  the  king’s  table;  and  yet  we  all  knew  that  the 
poor  devil  had  never  been  presented  at  court,  and  accused  himself  of 
stealing  these  spoons  to  make  us  believe  that  he  had  been  a  guest  at 
the  palace.  No  !  In  German  philosophy  M.  Cousin  has  always  kept  the 
sixth  commandment ;  here  he  has  never  pocketed  a  single  idea,  not  so 
much  as  a  salt-spoon  of  an  idea.  All  witnesses  agree  in  attesting  that 
in  this  respect  M.  Cousin  is  honor  itself.  ...  I  prophesy  to  you  that 
the  renown  of  M.  Cousin,  like  the  French  Revolution,  will  go  round 
the  world !  1  hear  some  one  wickedly  add  :  Undeniably  the  renown  of 


104 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


M.  Cousin  is  going  round  the  world,  and  it  has  already  taken  its  de¬ 
parture  from  France .” 

The  following  “  symbolical  myth  ”  about  Louis  Philippe 
is  very  characteristic  of  Heine’s  manner :  — 

“  I  remember  very  well  that  immediately  on  my  arrival  [in  Paris] 
I  hastened  to  the  Palais  Royal  to  see  Louis  Philippe.  The  friend  who 
conducted  me  told  me  that  the  king  now  appeared  on  the  terrace  only 
at  stated  hours,  but  that  formerly  he  was  to  be  seen  at  any  time  for 
five  francs.  1  For  five  francs  ! 7  I  cried  with  amazement;  ‘  does  he  then 
show  himself  for  money  V  ‘No;  but  he  is  shown  fur  money,  and  it 
happens  in  this  way :  There  is  a  society  of  claqueurs,  marchands  de 
contremarques,  and  such  riff-raff,  who  offered  every  foreigner  to  show 
him  the  king  for  five  francs;  if  he  would  give  ten  francs,  he  might  see 
the  king  raise  his  eyes  to  heaven,  and  lay  his  hand  protestingly  on  his 
heart;  if  he  would  give  twenty  fraucs,  the  king  would  sing  the  Mar¬ 
seillaise.  If  the  foreigner  gave  five  francs,  they  raised  a  loud  cheering 
under  the  king’s  windows,  and  His  Majesty  appeared  on  the  terrace, 
bowed,  and  retired.  If  ten  francs,  they  shouted  still  louder,  and  gestic¬ 
ulated  as  if  they  had  been  possessed,  when  the  king  appeared,  who 
then,  as  a  sign  of  silent  emotion,  raised  his  eyes  to  heaven,  and  laid 
his  hand  on  his  heart.  English  visitors,  however,  would  sometimes 
spend  as  much  as  twenty  francs,  and  then  the  enthusiasm  mounted  to 
the  highest  pitch;  no  sooner  did  the  king  appear  on  the  terrace,  than 
the  Marseillaise  was  struck  up  and  roared  out  frightfully,  until  Louis 
Philippe,  perhaps  only  for  the  sake  of  putting  an  end  to  the  singing, 
bowed,  laid  his  hand  on  his  heart,  and  joined  in  the  Marseillaise. 
Whether,  as  is  asserted,  he  beat  time  with  his  foot,  I  cannot  say.’  ” 

One  more  quotation  and  it  must  be  our  last :  — 

“Oh  the  women !  We  must  forgive  them  much,  for  they  love  much, 
and  many.  Their  hate  is  properly  only  love  turned  inside  out.  Some¬ 
times  they  attribute  some  delinquency  to  us,  because  they  think  they 
can  in  this  way  gratify  another  man.  When  they  write,  they  have 
always  one  eye  on  the  paper  and  the  other  on  a  man  ;  and  this  is  true 
of  all  authoresses,  except  the  Countess  Hahn-Hahu,  who  has  only  one 
eye.” 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING. 


IVEN,  a  man  with  moderate  intellect,  a  moral  standard 


not  higher  than  the  average,  some  rhetorical  affluence 
and  great  glibness  of  speech,  what  is  the  career  in  which, 
without  the  aid  of  birth  or  money,  he  may  most  easily  attain 
power  and  reputation  in  English  society  ?  Where  is  that 
Goshen  of  mediocrity  in  which  a  smattering  of  science  and 
learning  will  pass  for  profound  instruction,  where  platitudes 
will  be  accepted  as  wisdom,  bigoted  narrowness  as  holy  zeal, 
unctuous  egoism  as  God-given  piety  ?  Let  such  a  man  be¬ 
come  an  evangelical  preacher ;  he  will  then  find  it  possible 
to  reconcile  small  ability  with  great  ambition,  superficial 
knowledge  with  the  prestige  of  erudition,  a  middling  morale 
with  a  high  reputation  for  sanctity.  Let  him  shun  practical 
extremes  and  be  ultra  only  in  what  is  purely  theoretic :  let 
him  be  stringent  on  predestination,  but  latitudinarian  on  fast¬ 
ing  ;  unflinching  in  insisting  on  the  Eternity  of  punishment, 
but  diffident  of  curtailing  the  substantial  comforts  of  Time ; 
ardent  and  imaginative  on  the  pre-millennial  advent  of  Christ, 
but  cold  and  cautious  towards  every  other  infringement  of 
the  status  quo.  Let  him  fish  for  souls,  not  with  the  bait  of  in¬ 
convenient  singularity,  but  with  the  drag-net  of  comfortable 
conformity.  Let  him  be  hard  and  literal  in  his  interpretation 
only  when  he  wants  to  hurl  texts  at  the  heads  of  unbelievers 
and  adversaries ;  but  when  the  letter  of  the  Scriptures  presses 
too  closely  on  the  genteel  Christianity  of  the  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury,  let  him  use  his  spiritualizing  alembic  and  disperse  it 
into  impalpable  ether.  Let  him  preach  less  of  Christ  than  of 
Antichrist ;  let  him  be  less  definite  in  showing  what  sin  is 


106 


ESSAYS  OF.  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


than  in  showmg  who  is  the  Man  of  Sin,  less  expansive  on  the 
blessedness  of  faith  than  on  the  accursedness  of  infidelity. 
Above  all,  let  him  set  up  as  an  interpreter  of  prophecy,  and 
rival  Moore’s  Almanack  in  the  prediction  of  political  events, 
tickling  the  interest  of  hearers  who  are  but  moderately  spir¬ 
itual  by  showing  how  the  Holy  Spirit  has  dictated  problems 
and  charades  for  their  benefit,  and  how,  if  they  are  ingenious 
enough  to  solve  these,  they  may  have  their  Christian  graces 
nourished  by  learning  precisely  to  whom  they  may  point  as 
the  “horn  that  had  eyes,”  “the  lying  prophet,”  and  the  “un¬ 
clean  spirits.”  In  this  way  he  will  draw  men  to  him  by  the 
strong  cords  of  their  passions,  made  reason-proof  by  being 
baptized  with  the  name  of  piety.  In  this  way  he  may  gain  a 
metropolitan  pulpit ;  the  avenues  to  his  church  will  be  as 
crowded  as  the  passages  to  the  opera ;  he  has  but  to  print  his 
prophetic  sermons  and  bind  them  in  lilac  and  gold,  and  they 
will  adorn  the  drawing-room  table  of  all  evangelical  ladies, 
who  will  regard  as  a  sort  of  pious  “  light  reading  ”  the  dem¬ 
onstration  that  the  prophecy  of  the  locusts  whose  sting  is  in 
their  tail  is  fulfilled  in  the  fact  of  the  Turkish  commander’s 
having  taken  a  horse’s  tail  for  his  standard,  and  that  the 
French  are  the  very  frogs  predicted  in  the  Revelations. 

Pleasant  to  the  clerical  flesh  under  such  circumstances  is 
the  arrival  of  Sunday  !  Somewhat  at  a  disadvantage  during 
the  week,  in  the  presence  of  working-day  interests  and  lay 
splendors,  on  Sunday  the  preacher  becomes  the  cynosure  of  a 
thousand  eyes,  and  predominates  at  once  over  the  Amphit¬ 
ryon  with  whom  he  dines,  and  the  most  captious  member  of 
his  church  or  vestry.  He  has  an  immense  advantage  over  all 
other  public  speakers.  The  platform  orator  is  subject  to  the 
criticism  of  hisses  and  groans.  Counsel  for  the  plaintiff 
expects  the  retort  of  counsel  for  the  defendant.  The  honor¬ 
able  gentleman  on  one  side  of  the  House  is  liable  to  have  his 
facts  and  figures  shown  up  by  his  honorable  friend  on  th6 
opposite  side.  Even  the  scientific  or  literary  lecturer,  if  he 
is  dull  or  incompetent,  may  see  the  best  part  of  his  audience 
quietly  slip  out  one  by  one.  But  the  preacher  is  completely 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  107 


master  of  the  situation :  no  one  may  hiss,  no  one  may  depart. 
Like  the  writer  of  imaginary  conversations,  he  may  put  what 
imbecilities  he  pleases  into  the  mouths  of  his  antagonists, 
and  swell  with  triumph  when  he  has  refuted  them.  He  may 
riot  in  gratuitous  assertions,  confident  that  no  man  will  con¬ 
tradict  him ;  he  may  exercise  perfect  free-will  in  logic,  and 
invent  illustrative  experience ;  he  may  give  an  evangelical 
edition  of  history  with  the  inconvenient  facts  omitted;  —  all 
this  he  may  do  with  impunity,  certain  that  those  of  his  hear¬ 
ers  who  are  not  sympathizing  are  not  listening.  For  the  Press 
has  no  band  of  critics  who  go  the  round  of  the  churches  and 
chapels,  and  are  on  the  watch  for  a  slip  or  defect  in  the 
preacher,  to  make  a  “  feature  ”  in  their  article ;  the  clergy 
are,  practically,  the  most  irresponsible  of  all  talkers.  For 
this  reason,  at  least,  it  is  well  that  they  do  not  always  allow 
their  discourses  to  be  merely  fugitive,  but  are  often  induced 
to  fix  them  in  that  black  and  white  in  which  they  are  open  to 
the  criticism  of  any  man  who  has  the  courage  and  patience  to 
treat  them  with  thorough  freedom  of  speech  and  pen. 

It  is  because  we  think  this  criticism  of  clerical  teaching 
desirable  for  the  public  good,  that  we  devote  some  pages  to 
Dr.  Cumming.  He  is,  as  every  one  knows,  a  preacher  of  im¬ 
mense  popularity ;  and  of  the  numerous  publications  in  which 
he  perpetuates  his  pulpit  labors,  all  circulate  widely,  and 
some,  according  to  their  titlepage,  have  reached  the  sixteenth 
thousand.  Now,  our  opinion  of  these  publications  is  the  very 
opposite  of  that  given  by  a  newspaper  eulogist :  we  do  not 
u  believe  that  the  repeated  issues  of  Dr.  Cumming’s  thoughts 
are  having  a  beneficial  effect  on  society,”  but  the  reverse ; 
and  hence,  little  inclined  as  we  are  to  dwell  on  his  pages,  we 
think  it  worth  while  to  do  so,  for  the  sake  of  pointing  out  in 
them  what  we  believe  to  be  profoundly  mistaken  and  per¬ 
nicious.  Of  Dr.  Cumming  personally  we  know  absolutely 
nothing ;  our  acquaintance  with  him  is  confined  to  a  perusal 
of  his  works,  our  judgment  of  him  is  founded  solely  on 
the  manner  in  which  he  has  written  himself  down  on  his 
pages.  We  know  neither  how  he  looks  nor  how  he  lives 


108 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


We  are  ignorant  whether,  like  St.  Paul,  he  has  a  bodily  pres¬ 
ence  that  is  weak  and  contemptible,  or  whether  his  person  is 
as  florid  and  as  prone  to  amplification  as  his  style.  For 
aught  we  know,  he  may  not  only  have  the  gift  of  prophecy, 
but  may  bestow  the  profits  of  all  his  works  to  feed  the  poor, 
and  be  ready  to  give  his  own  body  to  be  burned  with  as  much 
alacrity  as  he  infers  the  everlasting  burning  of  Roman  Catho¬ 
lics  and  Puseyites.  Out  of  the  pulpit  he  may  be  a  model  of 
justice,  truthfulness,  and  the  love  that  thinketh  no  evil ;  but 
we  are  obliged  to  judge  of  his  charity  by  the  spirit  we  find 
iu  his  sermons,  and  shall  only  be  glad  to  learn  that  his  prac¬ 
tice  is,  in  many  respects,  an  amiable  non  sequitur  from  his 
teaching. 

Dr.  Cumming’s  mind  is  evidently  not  of  the  pietistic  order. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  leaning  towards  mysticism  in  his 
Christianity,  —  no  indication  of  religious  raptures,  of  delight 
in  God,  of  spiritual  communion  with  the  Father.  He  is  most 
at  home  in  the  forensic  view  of  Justification,  and  dwells  on 
salvation  as  a  scheme  rather  than  as  an  experience.  He 
insists  on  good  works  as  the  sign  of  justifying  faith,  as  labors 
to  be  achieved  to  the  glory  of  God ;  but  he  rarely  represents 
them  as  the  spontaneous,  necessary  outflow  of  a  soul  filled 
with  Divine  love.  He  is  at  home  in  the  external,  the  polem¬ 
ical,  the  historical,  the  circumstantial,  and  is  only  episodi¬ 
cally  devout  and  practical.  The  great  majority  of  his 
published  sermons  are  occupied  with  argument  or  philippic 
against  Romanists  and  unbelievers,  with  “vindications”  of 
the  Bible,  with  the  political  interpretation  of  prophecy,  or 
the  criticism  of  public  events ;  and  the  devout  aspiration, 
or  the  spiritual  and  practical  exhortation,  is  tacked  to  them  as 
a  sort  of  fringe  in  a  hurried  sentence  or  two  at  the  end.  He 
revels  in  the  demonstration  that  the  Pope  is  the  Man  of  Sin ; 
he  is  copious  on  the  downfall  of  the  Ottoman  Empire ;  he  ap¬ 
pears  to  glow  with  satisfaction  in  turning  a  story  which  tends 
to  show  how  he  abashed  an  “  infidel ;  ”  it  is  a  favorite  exer¬ 
cise  with  him  to  form  conjectures  of  the  process  by  which  the 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  109 


earth  is  to  be  burned  up,  and  to  picture  Dr.  Chalmers  and 
Mr.  Wilberforce  being  caught  up  to  meet  Christ  in  the  air, 
while  Romanists,  Puseyites,  and  infidels  are  given  over  tc 
gnashing  of  teeth.  But  of  really  spiritual  joys  and  sorrows 
of  the  life  and  death  of  Christ  as  a  manifestation  of  love 
that  constrains  the  soul,  of  sympathy  with  that  yearning  over 
the  lost  and  erring  which  made  Jesus  weep  over  Jerusalem, 
and  prompted  the  sublime  prayer,  “  Father,  forgive  them,” 
of  the  gentler  fruits  of  the  Spirit,  and  the  peace  of  God  which 
passeth  understanding, — of  all  this,  we  find  little  trace  in 
Dr.  Cumming’s  discourses. 

His  style  is  in  perfect  correspondence  with  this  habit  of 
mind.  Though  diffuse,  as  that  of  all  preachers  must  be,  it 
has  rapidity  of  movement,  perfect  clearness,  and  some  apt' 
ness  of  illustration.  He  has  much  of  that  literary  talent 
which  makes  a  good  journalist,  —  the  power  of  beating  out 
an  idea  over  a  large  space,  and  of  introducing  far-fetched 
apropos.  His  writings  have,  indeed,  no  high  merit :  they 
have  no  originality  or  force  of  thought,  no  striking  felicity 
of  presentation,  no  depth  of  emotion.  Throughout  nine 
volumes  we  have  alighted  on  no  passage  which  impressed  us 
as  worth  extracting,  and  placing  among  the  “  beauties  ”  of 
evangelical  writers,  such  as  Robert  Hall,  Foster  the  Essayist, 
or  Isaac  Taylor.  Everywhere  there  is  commonplace  clever¬ 
ness,  nowhere  a  spark  of  rare  thought,  of  lofty  sentiment,  01 
pathetic  tenderness.  We  feel  ourselves  in  company  with  a 
voluble  retail  talker,  whose  language  is  exuberant  but  not 
exact,  and  to  whom  we  should  never  think  of  referring  for 
precise  information  or  for  well-digested  thought  and  expe¬ 
rience.  His  argument  continually  slides  into  wholesale  asser¬ 
tion  and  vague  declamation,  and  in  his  love  of  ornament  he 
frequently  becomes  tawdry.  For  example,  lie  tells  us 1  that 
“  Botany  weaves  around  the  cross  her  amaranthine  garlands ; 
and  Newton  comes  from  his  starry  home,  Linnaeus  from  his 
flowery  resting-place,  and  Werner  and  Hutton  from  their  sub¬ 
terranean  graves,  at  the  voice  of  Chalmers,  to  acknowledge 

1  Apoc.  Sketches,  p.  265. 


110 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


that  all  they  learned  and  elicited  in  their  respective  provinces, 
has  only  served  to  show  more  clearly  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
is  enthroned  on  the  riches  of  the  universe ;  ”  —  and  so  prosaic 
an  injunction  to  his  hearers  as  that  they  should  choose  a  resi¬ 
dence  within  an  easy  distance  of  church,  is  magnificently 
draped  by  him  as  an  exhortation  to  prefer  a  house  “that 
basks  in  the  sunshine  of  the  countenance  of  God.”  Like  all 
preachers  of  his  class,  he  is  more  fertile  in  imaginative  para¬ 
phrase  than  in  close  exposition,  and  in  this  way  he  gives  us 
some  remarkable  fragments  of  what  we  may  call  the  romance 
of  Scripture,  filling  up  the  outline  of  the  record  with  an  elab¬ 
orate  coloring  quite  undreamed  of  by  more  literal  minds. 
The  serpent,  he  informs  us,  said  to  Eve,  “  Can  it  be  so  ? 
Surely  you  are  mistaken,  that  God  hath  said  you  shall  die,  a 
creature  so  fair,  so  lovely,  so  beautiful.  It  is  impossible. 
The  laws  of  nature  and  physical  science  tell  you  that  my  inter¬ 
pretation  is  correct ;  you  shall  not  die.  I  can  tell  you  by  my 
own  experience  as  an  angel  that  you  shall  be  as  gods,  know¬ 
ing  good  and  evil.”1  Again,  according  to  Dr.  Cumming, 
Abel  had  so  clear  an  idea  of  the  Incarnation  and  Atonement, 
that  when  he  offered  his  sacrifice  “  he  must  have  said,  ‘I  feel 
myself  a  guilty  sinner,  and  that  in  myself  I  cannot  meet  thee 
alive ;  I  lay  on  thine  altar  this  victim,  and  I  shed  its  blood 
as  my  testimony  that  mine  should  be  shed ;  and  I  look  for 
forgiveness  and  undeserved  mercy  through  Him  who  is  to 
bruise  the  serpent’s  head,  and  whose  atonement  this  typi¬ 
fies.’  ” 2  Indeed,  his  productions  are  essentially  ephemeral ; 
ne  is  essentially  a  journalist,  who  writes  sermons  instead  of 
leading  articles,  who,  instead  of  venting  diatribes  against  her 
Majesty’s  Ministers,  directs  his  power  of  invective  against 
Cardinal  Wiseman  and  the  Puseyites,  —  instead  of  declaiming 
on  public  spirit,  perorates  on  the  “glory  of  God.”  We  fancy 
he  is  called,  in  the  more  refined  evangelical  circles,  an  “  intel¬ 
lectual  preacher ;  ”  by  the  plainer  sort  of  Christians,  a  “  flow¬ 
ery  preacher ;  ”  and  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  the  more 
spiritually  minded  class  of  believers,  who  look  with  greater 
1  Apoc.  Sketches,  p.  294.  ‘  Occas.  Disc.,  vol.  i.  p.  23 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  Ill 


anxiety  for  the  kingdom  of  God  within  them  than  for  the 
visible  advent  of  Christ  in  1864,  will  be  likely  to  find  Dr. 
Cumming’s  declamatory  flights  and  liistorico-prophetical  exer- 
citations  as  little  better  than  “  clouts  o’  cauld  parritch.” 

Such  is  our  general  impression  from  his  writings  after  an 
attentive  perusal.  There  are  some  particular  characteristics 
which  we  shall  consider  more  closely,  but  in  doing  so  we 
must  be  understood  as  altogether  declining  any  doctrinal  dis¬ 
cussion.  We  have  no  intention  to  consider  the  grounds  of 
Dr.  Cumming’s  dogmatic  system,  to  examine  the  principles 
of  his  prophetic  exegesis,  or  to  question  his  opinion  concern¬ 
ing  the  little  horn,  the  river  Euphrates,  or  the  seven  vials. 
We  identify  ourselves  with  no  one  of  the  bodies  whom  he 
regards  it  as  his  special  mission  to  attack ;  we  give  our  adhe¬ 
sion  neither  to  Romanism,  Puseyism,  nor  to  that  anomalous 
combination  of  opinions  which  he  introduces  to  us  under  the 
name  of  Infidelity.  It  is  simply  as  spectators  that  we  criti¬ 
cise  Dr.  Cumming’s  mode  of  warfare ;  and  we  concern  our¬ 
selves  less  with  what  he  holds  to  be  Christian  truth  than 
with  his  manner  of  enforcing  that  truth,  less  with  the  doc¬ 
trines  he  teaches  than  with  the  moral  spirit  and  tendencies 
of  his  teaching. 

One  of  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  Dr.  Cumming’s 
writings  is  unscrupulosity  of  statement.  His  motto  apparently 
is,  Christianitatern,  quocunque  modo  Christianitatem  ;  and  the 
only  system  he  includes  under  the  term  Christianity  is  Cal- 
vinistic  Protestantism.  Experience  has  so  long  shown  that 
the  human  brain  is  a  congenial  nidus  for  inconsistent  belief's 
that  we  do  not  pause  to  inquire  how  Dr.  Cumming,  who  attrib¬ 
utes  the  conversion  of  the  unbelieving  to  the  Divine  Spirit, 
can  think  it  necessary  to  co-operate  with  that  Spirit  by  argu¬ 
mentative  white  lies.  Nor  do  we  for  a  moment  impugn  the 
genuineness  of  his  zeal  for  Christianity,  or  the  sincerity  of 
his  conviction  that  the  doctrines  he  preaches  are  necessary 
to  salvation;  on  the  contrary,  we  regard  the  flagrant  unve¬ 
racity  that  we  find  on  his  pages  as  an  indirect  result  of  that 
conviction,  —  as  a  result,  namely,  of  the  intellectual  and 


112 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


moral  distortion  of  view  which  is  inevitably  produced  t>y 
assigning  to  dogmas,  based  on  a  very  complex  structure  of 
evidence,  the  place  and  authority  of  first  truths.  A  distinct 
appreciation  of  the  value  of  evidence  —  in  other  words,  the 
intellectual  perception  of  truth  —  is  more  closely  allied  to 
truthfulness  of  statement,  or  the  moral  quality  of  veracity, 
than  is  generally  admitted.  There  is  not  a  more  pernicious 
fallacy  afloat  in  common  parlance  than  the  wide  distinction 
made  between  intellect  and  morality.  Amiable  impulses 
without  intellect  man  may  have  in  common  with  dogs  and 
horses ;  but  morality,  which  is  specifically  human,  is  depen¬ 
dent  on  the  regulation  of  feeling  by  intellect.  All  human 
beings  who  can  be  said  to  be  in  any  degree  moral  have  their 
impulses  guided,  not  indeed  always  by  their  own  intellect, 
but  by  the  intellect  of  human  beings  who  have  gone  before 
them,  and  created  traditions  and  associations  which  have 
taken  the  rank  of  laws.  Now,  that  highest  moral  habit,  the 
constant  preference  of  truth  both  theoretically  and  practi¬ 
cally,  pre-eminently  demands  the  co-operation  of  the  intellect 
with  the  impulses ;  as  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  it  is  only 
found  in  anything  like  completeness  in  the  highest  class  of 
minds.  In  accordance  with  this  we  think  it  is  found  that, 
in  proportion  as  religious  sects  exalt  feeling  above  intellect, 
and  believe  themselves  to  be  guided  by  direct  inspiration 
rather  than  by  a  spontaneous  exertion  of  their  faculties,  — 
that  is,  in  proportion  as  they  are  removed  from  rationalism, 
—  their  sense  of  truthfulness  is  misty  and  confused.  No  one 
can  have  talked  to  the  more  enthusiastic  Methodists,  and  lis¬ 
tened  to  their  stories  of  miracles,  without  perceiving  that  they 
require  no  other  passport  to  a  statement  than  that  it  accords 
with  their  wishes  and  their  general  conception  of  God’s  deal¬ 
ings  ;  nay,  they  regard  as  a  symptom  of  sinful  scepticism  an 
inquiry  into  the  evidence  for  a  story  which  they  think  un¬ 
questionably  tends  to  the  glory  of  God,  and  in  retailing  such 
stories,  new  particulars,  further  tending  to  his  glory,  are 
“ borne  in”  upon  their  minds.  Now,  Dr.  Cumming,  as  we 
have  said,  is  no  enthusiastic  pietist :  within  a  certain  circle, 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  113 


within  the  mill  of  evangelical  orthodoxy,  his  intellect  ie 
perpetually  at  work;  but  that  principle  of  sophistication 
which  our  friends  the  Methodists  derive  from  the  predomi¬ 
nance  of  their  pietistic  feelings,  is  involved  for  him  in  the 
doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration ;  what  is  for  them  a  state  of 
emotion  submerging  the  intellect,  is  with  him  a  formula  im¬ 
prisoning  the  intellect,  depriving  it  of  its  proper  function, — 
the  free  search  for  truth  —  and  making  it  the  mere  servant- 
of-all-work  to  a  foregone  conclusion.  Minds  fettered  by  this 
doctrine  no  longer  inquire  concerning  a  proposition  whether 
it  is  attested  by  sufficient  evidence,  but  whether  it  accords 
with  Scripture ;  they  do  not  search  for  facts,  as  such,  but  for 
facts  that  will  bear  out  their  doctrine.  They  become  accus¬ 
tomed  to  reject  the  more  direct  evidence  in  favor  of  the  less 
direct,  and  where  adverse  evidence  reaches  demonstration 
they  must  resort  to  devices  and  expedients  in  order  to  ex¬ 
plain  away  contradiction.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  mental 
habit  blunts  not  only  the  perception  of  truth,  but  the  sense 
of  truthfulness,  and  that  the  man  whose  faith  drives  him  into 
fallacies  treads  close  upon  the  precipice  of  falsehood. 

We  have  entered  into  this  digression  for  the  sake  of  miti¬ 
gating  the  inference  that  is  likely  to  be  drawn  from  that 
characteristic  of  Dr.  Cumming’s  works  to  which  we  have 
pointed.  He  is  much  in  the  same  intellectual  condition  as 
that  professor  of  Padua  who,  in  order  to  disprove  Galileo’s 
discovery  of  Jupiter’s  satellites,  urged  that  as  there  were 
only  seven  metals  there  could  not  be  more  than  seven  planets, 
—  a  mental  condition  scarcely  compatible  with  candor.  And 
we  may  well  suppose  that  if  the  Professor  had  held  the  be¬ 
lief  in  seven  planets,  and  no  more,  to  be  a  necessary  condi¬ 
tion  of  salvation,  his  mental  condition  would  have  been  so 
dazed  that  even  if  he  had  consented  to  look  through  Galileo’s 
telescope,  his  eyes  would  have  reported  in  accordance  with 
his  inward  alarms  rather  than  with  the  external  fact.  So 
long  as  a  belief  in  propositions  is  regarded  as  indispensable 
to  salvation,  the  pursuit  of  truth  as  such  is  not  possible,  any 

more  than  it  is  possible  for  a  man  who  is  swimming  for  hia 

6 


VOL.  IA. 


114 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


life  to  make  meteorological  observations  on  the  storm  which 
threatens  to  overwhelm  him.  The  sense  of  alarm  and  haste, 
the  anxiety  for  personal  safety,  which  Dr.  Gumming  insists 
upon  as  the  proper  religious  attitude,  unmans  the  nature,  and 
allows  no  thorough  calm-thinking,  no  truly  noble,  disin¬ 
terested  feeling.  Hence  we  by  no  means  suspect  that  the 
unscrupulosity  of  statement  with  which  we  charge  Dr.  Gum¬ 
ming  extends  beyond  the  sphere  of  his  theological  prejudices  ; 
we  do  not  doubt  that,  religion  apart,  he  appreciates  and  prac¬ 
tises  veracity. 

A  grave  general  accusation  must  be  supported  by  details ; 
and  in  adducing  those,  we  purposely  select  the  most  obvious 
cases  of  misrepresentation,  —  such  as  require  no  argument  to 
expose  them,  but  can  be  perceived  at  a  glance.  Among  Dr. 
Gumming’s  numerous  books,  one  of  the  most  notable  for  un¬ 
scrupulosity  of  statement  is  the  “  Manual  of  Christian  Evi¬ 
dences, written,  as  he  tells  us  in  his  preface,  not  to  give  the 
deepest  solutions  of  the  difficulties  in  question,  but  to  fur¬ 
nish  Scripture-Readers,  City  Missionaries,  and  Sunday-school 
Teachers  with  a  “  ready  reply  ”  to  sceptical  arguments. 
This  announcement  that  readiness  was  the  chief  quality 
sought  for  in  the  solutions  here  given,  modifies  our  inference 
from  the  other  qualities  which  those  solutions  present ;  and 
it  is  but  fair  to  presume  that  when  the  Christian  disputant 
is  not  in  a  hurry,  Dr.  Gumming  would  recommend  replies  less 
ready  and  more  veracious.  Here  is  an  example  of  what  in 
another  place 1  he  tells  his  readers  is  “  change  in  their  pocket, 

.  .  .  a  little  ready  argument  which  they  can  employ,  and 
therewith  answer  a  fool  according  to  his  folly.”  From  the 
nature  of  this  argumentative  small  coin,  we  are  inclined  to 
think  Dr.  Cumming  understands  answering  a  fool  according 
to  his  folly  to  mean,  giving  him  a  foolish  answer.  We  quote 
from  the  “  Manual  of  Christian  Evidences,”  p.  62 :  — 

“  Some  of  the  gods  which  the  heathen  worshipped  were  among  the 
greatest  monsters  that  ever  wralked  the  earth.  Mercury  was  a  thief ; 
and  because  he  was  an  expert  thief,  he  was  enrolled  among  the  gods. 

1  Lect.  on  Daniel,  p.  6. 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  115 


baccnus  was  a  mere  sensualist  and  drunkard ;  and  therefore  he  was 
enrolled  among  the  gods.  Venus  was  a  dissipated  and  abandoned 
courtesan ;  and  therefore  she  was  enrolled  among  the  goddesses. 
Mars  was  a  savage,  that  gloried  in  battle  and  in  blood;  and  therefore 
he  was  deified  and  enrolled  among  the  gods.” 

Does  Dr.  Cumming  believe  the  purport  of  these  sentences  ? 
If  so,  this  passage  is  worth  handing  down  as  his  theory  of 
the  Greek  myth,  —  as  a  specimen  of  the  astounding  ignorance 
which  was  possible  in  a  metropolitan  preacher,  a.  d.  1854. 
And  if  he  does  not  believe  them,  —  the  inference  must 
then  be,  that  he  thinks  delicate  veracity  about  the  ancient 
Greeks  is  not  a  Christian  virtue,  but  only  a  “  splendid  sin  ” 
cf  the  unregenerate.  This  inference  is  rendered  the  more 
probable  by  our  finding,  a  little  further  on,  that  he  is  not 
more  scrupulous  about  the  moderns,  if  they  come  under  his 
definition  of  “Infidels.”  But  the  passage  we  are  about  to 
ouote  in  proof  of  this  has  a  worse  quality  than  its  discrep¬ 
ancy  with  fact.  Who  that  has  a  spark  of  generous  feeling, 
that  rejoices  in  the  presence  of  good  in  a  fellow-being,  has 
not  dwelt  with  pleasure  on  the  thought  that  Lord  Byron’s 
unhappy  career  was  ennobled  and  purified  towards  its  close 
by  a  high  and  sympathetic  purpose,  by  honest  and  energetic 
efforts  for  his  fellow-men  ?  Who  has  not  read  with  deep 
emotion  those  last  pathetic  lines,  beautiful  as  the  after-glow 
of  sunset,  in  which  love  and  resignation  are  mingled  with 
something  of  a  melancholy  heroism  ?  Who  has  not  lingered 
with  compassion  over  the  dying  scene  at  Missolonghi,  —  the 
sufferer’s  inability  to  make  his  farewell  messages  of  love  in¬ 
telligible,  and  the  last  long  hours  of  silent  pain  ?  Yet  for 
the  sake  of  furnishing  his  disciples  with  a  “  ready  reply,” 
Dr.  Cumming  can  prevail  on  himself  to  inoculate  them  with 
a  bad-spirited  falsity  like  the  following :  — 

“  We  have  one  striking  exhibition  of  an  infideVs  brightest  thoughts 
in  some  lines  icritten  in  his  dying  moments  by  a  man  gifted  with  great 
genius,  capable  of  prodigious  intellectual  prowess,  but  of  worthless 
principle  and  yet  more  worthless  practices,  —  I  mean  the  celebrated  w 
Lord  Byron.  He  says :  — 


116 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


‘  Though  gay  companions  o’er  the  bowl 
Dispel  awhile  the  sense  of  ill, 

Though  pleasure  fills  the  maddening  soul. 

The  heart  —  the  heart  is  lonely  still. 

‘Ay,  but  to  die,  and  go,  alas ! 

Where  all  have  gone  and  all  must  go ; 

To  be  the  Nothing  that  I  was. 

Ere  born  to  life  and  living  woe ! 

‘Count  o’er  the  joys  thine  hours  have  seen. 

Count  o’er  thy  days  from  anguish  free. 

And  know,  whatever  thou  hast  been, 

’T  is  something  better  not  to  be. 

'Nay,  for  myself,  so  dark  my  fate 

Through  every  turn  of  life  hath  been, 

Man  and  the  world  so  much  I  hate, 

I  care  not  when  I  quit  the  scene.’  ” 

It  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  Dr.  Cumming  can  have  bee* 
so  grossly  imposed  upon,  —  that  he  can  be  so  ill-informed  as 
really  to  believe  that  these  lines  were  “  written  ”  by  Lord 
Byron  in  his  dying  moments;  but,  allowing  him  the  full 
benefit  of  that  possibility,  how  shall  we  explain  his  introduc¬ 
tion  of  this  feebly  rabid  doggerel  as  “an  infidel’s  brightest 
thoughts ” ? 

In  marshalling  the  evidences  of  Christianity,  Dr.  Cumming 
directs  most  of  his  arguments  against  opinions  that  are  either 
totally  imaginary  or  that  belong  to  the  past  rather  than  to 
the  present,  while  he  entirely  fails  to  meet  the  difficulties 
actually  felt  and  urged  by  those  who  are  unable  to  accept 
Revelation.  There  can  hardly  be  a  stronger  proof  of  mis¬ 
conception  as  to  the  character  of  free-thinking  in  the  present 
day,  than  the  recommendation  of  Leland’s  “  Short  and  Easy 
Method  with  the  Deists,”  —  a  method  which  is  unquestion¬ 
ably  short  and  easy  for  preachers  disinclined  to  reconsider 
their  stereotyped  modes  of  thinking  and  arguing,  but  which 
has  quite  ceased  to  realize  those  epithets  in  the  conversion  of 
Deists.  Yet  Dr.  Cumming  not  only  recommends  this  book, 
but  takes  tha  trouble  himself  to  write  a  feebler  version  of  its 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  GUMMING.  117 

arguments.  For  example,  on  the  question  of  the  genuine¬ 
ness  and  authenticity  of  the  New  Testament  writings,  he 
says :  “  If,  therefore,  at  a  period  long  subsequent  to  the  death 
of  Christ,  a  number  of  men  had  appeared  in  the  world,  drawn 
up  a  book  which  they  christened  by  the  name  of  the  Holy 
Scripture,  and  recorded  these  things  which  appear  in  it  as 
facts  when  they  were  only  the  fancies  of  their  own  imagina¬ 
tion,  surely  the  Jews  would  have  instantly  reclaimed  that  no 
such  events  transpired,  that  no  such  person  as  Jesus  Christ 
appeared  in  their  capital,  and  that  their  crucifixion  of  Him, 
and  their  alleged  evil  treatment  of  his  apostles,  were  mere 
fictions.” 1  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that,  in  such  argu¬ 
ment  as  this,  Dr.  Cumming  is  beating  the  air.  He  is  meeting 
a  hypothesis  which  no  one  holds,  and  totally  missing  the  real 
question.  The  only  type  of  “  infidel  ”  whose  existence  Dr. 
Cumming  recognizes  is  that  fossil  personage  who  “  calls  the 
Bible  a  lie  and  a  forgery.”  He  seems  to  be  ignorant  —  or  he 
chooses  to  ignore  the  fact  —  that  there  is  a  large  body  of 
eminently  instructed  and  earnest  men  who  regard  the  Hebrew 
and  Christian  Scriptures  as  a  series  of  historical  documents, 
to  be  dealt  with  according  to  the  rules  of  historical  criticism, 
and  that  an  equally  large  number  of  men,  who  are  not  histori¬ 
cal  critics,  find  the  dogmatic  scheme  built  on  the  letter  of  the 
Scriptures  opposed  to  their  profoundest  moral  convictions. 
Dr.  Cumming’s  infidel  is  a  man  who,  because  his  life  is  vicious, 
tries  to  convince  himself  that  there  is  no  God,  and  that  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  an  imposture,  but  who  is  all  the  while  secretly  con- 
scious  that  he  is  opposing  the  truth,  and  cannot  help  “  letting 
out”  admissions  “that  the  Bible  is  the  Book  of  God.”  We 
are  favored  with  the  following  “  Creed  of  the  Infidel :  ”  — 

“  I  believe  that  there  is  no  God,  but  that  matter  is  God,  and  God  is 
matter;  and  that  it  is  no  matter  whether  there  is  any  God  or  not.  I 
believe  also  that  the  world  was  not  made,  but  that  the  world  made 
itself,  or  that  it  had  no  beginning,  and  that  it  will  last  forever.  I  be¬ 
lieve  that  man  is  a  beast;  that  the  soul  is  the  body,  and  that  the  body 
is  the  soul;  and  that  after  death  there  is  neither  body  nor  soul.  I  be- 

1  Man.  of  Evidences,  p.  81. 


118 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


lieve  that  there  is  no  religion,  that  natural  religion  is  the  only  religion , 
and  all  religion  unnatural.  I  believe  not  in  Moses ;  I  believe  in  the 
first  philosophers.  I  believe  not  in  the  evangelists  ;  I  believe  in 
Chubb,  Collins,  Toland,  Tiudal,  and  Hobbes.  I  believe  in  Lord 
Bolingbroke,  and  I  believe  not  in  St.  Paul.  I  believe  not  in  revela¬ 
tion  ;  I  believe  in  tradition ;  I  believe  in  the  Talmud;  I  believe  in  the 
Kordn;  I  believe  not  in  the  Bible.  I  believe  in  Socrates;  I  believe 
in  Confucius;  I  believe  in  Mahomet;  I  believe  uot  in  Christ.  And 
lastly,  I  believe  in  all  unbelief.” 

The  intellectual  and  moral  monster  whose  creed  is  this 
complex  web  of  contradictions  is,  moreover,  according  to 
Dr.  Cumming,  a  being  who  unites  much  simplicity  and  imbe¬ 
cility  with  his  Satanic  hardihood,  much  tenderness  of  con¬ 
science  with  his  obdurate  vice.  Hear  the  “  proof :  ”  — 

u  I  once  met  with  an  acute  and  enlightened  infidel,  with  whom  I 
reasoned  day  after  day,  and  for  hours  together;  I  submitted  to  him  the 
internal,  the  external,  and  the  experimental  evidences,  but  made  no  im¬ 
pression  on  his  scorn  and  unbelief.  At  length  I  entertained  a  suspicion 
that  there  was  something  morally,  rather  than  intellectually  wrong,  and 
that  the  bias  was  not  in  the  intellect,  but  in  the  heart;  one  day  there¬ 
fore  I  said  to  him,  1 1  must  now  state  my  conviction,  and  you  may 
call  me  uncharitable,  but  duty  compels  me;  you  are  living  in  some 
known  and  gross  sin.7  The  man's  countenance  became  pale;  he  bowed 
and  left  me."  1 

Here  we  have  the  remarkable  psychological  phenomenon 
of  an  “  acute  and  enlightened  ”  man  who,  deliberately  pur¬ 
posing  to  indulge  in  a  favorite  sin,  and  regarding  the  Gospel 
with  scorn  and  unbelief,  is,  nevertheless,  so  much  more  scru¬ 
pulous  than  the  majority  of  Christians,  that  he  cannot  “  em¬ 
brace  sin  and  the  Gospel  simultaneously ;  ”  who  is  so  alarmed 
at  the  Gospel  in  which  he  does  not  believe,  that  he  cannot  be 
easy  without  trying  to  crush  it ;  whose  acuteness  and  enlight¬ 
enment  suggest  to  him,  as  a  means  of  crushing  the  Gospel,  to 
argue  from  day  to  day  with  Dr.  Cumming ,  and  who  is  withal 
so  naive  that  he  is  taken  by  surprise  when  Dr  Cumming, 
failing  in  argument,  resorts  to  accusation,  and  so  tender  w 

1  Man.  of  Evidences  p.  254. 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  1)R.  CUMMING.  119 


conscience  that,  at  the  mention  of  his  sin,  he  turns  pale  and 
leaves  the  spot.  If  there  be  any  human  mind  in  existence 
capable  of  holding  Dr.  Cumming’s  “  Creed  of  the  Infidel,”  of 
at  the  same  time  believing  in  tradition  and  “  believing  in  all 
unbelief,”  it  must  be  the  mind  of  the  infidel  just  described, 
for  whose  existence  we  have  Dr.  Cumming’s  ex  officio  word  as 
a  theologian ;  and  to  theologians  we  may  apply  what  Sancho 
Panza  says  of  the  bachelors  of  Salamanca,  that  they  never 
tell  lies  —  except  when  it  suits  their  purpose. 

The  total  absence  from  Dr.  Cumming’s  theological  mind  of 
any  demarcation  between  fact  and  rhetoric  is  exhibited  in 
another  passage,  where  he  adopts  the  dramatic  form :  — 

“Ask  the  peasant  on  the  hill  —  and  I  have  ashed  amid  the  moun¬ 
tains  of  Braemar  and  Deeside,  —  ‘  How  do  you  know  that  this  book  is 
divine,  and  that  the  religion  you  profess  is  true?  You  never  read 
Paley  ?  ’  ‘  No,  I  never  heard  of  him.’  ‘  You  have  never  read  But¬ 

ler?’  ‘No,  I  have  never  heard  of  him.’  ‘Nor  Chalmers?’  ‘No, 
I  do  not  know  him.’  ‘  You  have  never  read  any  books  on  evidence?’ 
‘  No,  I  have  read  no  such  books.’  ‘  Then  how  do  you  know  this 
book  is  true?’  ‘Know  it!  Tell  me  that  the  Dee,  the  Cluuie,  and 
the  Garrawalt,  the  streams  at  my  feet,  do  not  run  ;  that  the  winds  do 
not  sigh  amid  the  gorges  of  these  blue  hills ;  that  the  sun  does  not 
kindle  the  peaks  of  Loch-na-Gar;  tell  me  my  heart  does  not  beat,  and 
I  will  believe  you  ;  but  do  not  tell  me  the  Bible  is  not  divine.  I  have 
found  its  truth  illuminating  my  footsteps ;  its  consolations  sustaining 
my  heart.  May  my  tongue  cleave  to  my  mouth’s  roof,  and  my  right 
hand  forget  its  cunning,  if  I  ever  deny  what  is  my  deepest  inner  ex¬ 
perience,  that  this  blessed  book  is  the  book  of  God.’  ” 1 

Dr.  Cumming  is  so  slippery  and  lax  in  his  mode  of  presen¬ 
tation,  that  we  find  it  impossible  to  gather  whether  he  means 
to  assert,  that  this  is  what  a  peasant  on  the  mountains  of 
Braemar  did  say,  or  that  it  is  what  such  a  peasant  would  say : 
in  the  one  case,  the  passage  may  be  taken  as  a  measure  of 
his  truthfulness;  in  the  other,  of  his  judgment. 

His  own  faith,  apparently,  has  not  been  altogether  intui¬ 
tive,  like  that  of  his  rhetorical  peasant,  for  he  tells  us* 

1  Church  before  the  Flood,  p.  35. 


3  Apoc.  Sketches,  p.  405. 


120 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


that  he  has  himself  experienced  what  it  is  to  have  religious 
doubts.  “I  was  tainted  while  at  the  University  by  this 
spirit  of  scepticism.  I  thought  Christianity  might  not  be 
true.  The  very  possibility  of  its  being  true  was  the  thought 
I  felt  I  must  meet  and  settle.  Conscience  could  give  me  no 
peace  till  I  had  settled  it.  I  read,  and  I  have  read  from 
that  day,  for  fourteen  or  fifteen  years,  till  this,  and  now  J 
am  as  convinced,  upon  the  clearest  evidence,  that  this  book 
is  the  book  of  God  as  that  I  now  address  you.”  This  expe¬ 
rience,  however,  instead  of  impressing  on  linn  the  fact  that 
doubt  may  be  the  stamp  of  a  truth-loving  mind,  —  that 
sunt  quibus  non  credidisse  honor  est,  et  fidei  futurce  pignus ,  — 
seems  to  have  produced  precisely  the  contrary  effect.  It  has 
not  enabled  him  even  to  conceive  the  condition  of  a  mind 
“  perplext  in  faith  but  pure  in  deeds,”  craving  light,  yearning 
for  a  faith  that  will  harmonize  and  cherish  its  highest  pow¬ 
ers  and  aspirations,  but  unable  to  find  that  faith  in  dogmatic 
Christianity.  His  own  doubts  apparentl}7  were  of  a  different 
kind.  Nowhere  in  his  pages  have  we  found  a  humble,  can¬ 
did,  sympathetic  attempt  to  meet  the  difficulties  that  may  be 
felt  by  an  ingenuous  mind.  Everywhere  he  supposes  that 
the  doubter  is  hardened,  conceited,  consciously  shutting  his 
eyes  to  the  light,  — a  fool  who  is  to  be  answered  according  to 
his  folly,  —  that  is,  with  ready  replies  made  up  of  reckless 
assertions,  of  apocryphal  anecdotes,  and,  where  other  re¬ 
sources  fail,  of  vituperative  imputation.  As  to  the  reading 
which  he  has  prosecuted  for  fifteen  years  —  either  it  has  left 
him  totally  ignorant  of  the  relation  which  his  own  religious 
creed  bears  to  the  criticism  and  philosophy  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  or  he  systematically  blinks  that  criticism  and  that 
philosophy ;  and  instead  of  honestly  and  seriously  endeav¬ 
oring  to  meet  and  solve  what  he  knows  to  be  the  real  diffi¬ 
culties,  contents  himself  with  setting  up  popinjays  to  shoot 
at,  for  the  sake  of  confirming  the  ignorance  and  winning  the 
cheap  admiration  of  his  evangelical  hearers  and  readers. 
Like  the  Catholic  preacher  who,  after  throwing  down  his  cap 
and  apostrophizing  it  as  Luther,  turned  to  his  audience  and 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  HR.  CUMMING.  121 


said,  “  You  see  this  heretical  fellow  has  not  a  word  to  say 
for  himself/’  Dr.  Cumining,  having  drawn  his  ugly  portrait 
of  the  iniidel,  and  put  arguments  of  a  convenient  quality  into 
his  mouth,  finds  a  “  short  and  easy  method  ”  of  confounding 
this  “  croaking  frog.” 

In  his  treatment  of  infidels,  we  imagine  he  is  guided  by  a 
mental  process  which  may  be  expressed  in  the  following  syl¬ 
logism  :  Whatever  tends  to  the  glory  of  God  is  true  ;  it  is  for 
the  glory  of  God  that  infidels  should  be  as  bad  as  possible ; 
therefore,  whatever  tends  to  show  that  infidels  are  as  bad  as 
possible  is  true.  All  infidels,  he  tells  us,  have  been  men  of 
“  gross  and  licentious  lives.”  Is  there  not  some  well-known 
unbeliever  —  David  Hume,  for  example  —  of  whom  even  Dr. 
Cumming’s  readers  may  have  heard  as  an  exception?  No 
matter.  Some  one  suspected  that  he  was  not  an  exception ; 
and  as  that  suspicion  tends  to  the  glory  of  God,  it  is  one  for 
a  Christian  to  entertain.1  If  we  were  unable  to  imagine  this 
kind  of  self-sophistication,  we  should  be  obliged  to  suppose 
that,  relying  on  the  ignorance  of  his  evangelical  disciples,  he 
fed  them  with  direct  and  conscious  falsehoods.  “  V  oltaire,” 
he  informs  them,  “  declares  there  is  no  God ;  ”  he  was  “  an 
antitheist,  that  is,  one  who  deliberately  and  avowedly  opposed 
and  hated  God,  who  swore  in  his  blasphemy  that  he  would 
dethrone  him,”  and  “  advocated  the  very  depths  of  the  lowest 
sensuality.”  With  regard  to  many  statements  of  a  similar 
kind,  equally  at  variance  with  truth,  in  Dr.  Cumming’s  vol¬ 
umes,  we  presume  that  he  has  been  misled  by  hearsay  or  by 
the  second-hand  character  of  his  acquaintance  with  free- 
thinking  literature.  An  evangelical  preacher  is  not  obliged 
to  be  well-read.  Here,  however,  is  a  case  which  the  extrem- 
est  supposition  of  educated  ignorance  will  not  reach.  Even 
books  of  “evidences”  quote  from  Voltaire  the  line, — 

“  Si  Dieu  n’existait  pas,  il  faudrait  l’inventer  ;  ” 

even  persons  fed  on  the  mere  whey  and  buttermilk  of  litera¬ 
ture  must  know  that  in  philosophy  Voltaire  was  nothing  if 

1  See  Man.  of  Evidences,  p.  73.  * 


122 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


not  a  theist,  —  must  know  that  he  wrote  not  against  God,  but 
against  Jehovah,  the  God  of  the  Jews,  whom  he  believed  to 
be  a  false  God,  —  must  know  that  to  say  Voltaire  was  an  athe¬ 
ist  on  this  ground  is  as  absurd  as  to  say  that  a  Jacobite 
opposed  hereditary  monarchy  because  he  declared  the  Bruns¬ 
wick  family  had  no  title  to  the  throne.  That  Dr.  Gumming 
should  repeat  the  vulgar  fables  about  Voltaire’s  death  is' 
merely  what  we  might  expect  from  the  specimens  we  have 
seen  of  his  illustrative  stories.  A  man  whose  accounts  of 
his  own  experience  are  apocryphal,  is  not  likely  to  put  bor¬ 
rowed  narratives  to  any  severe  test. 

The  alliance  between  intellectual  and  moral  perversion  is 
strikingly  typified  by  the  way  in  which  he  alternates  from 
the  unveracious  to  the  absurd,  from  misrepresentation  to  con¬ 
tradiction.  Side  by  side  with  the  adduction  of  “  facts  ”  such 
as  those  we  have  quoted,  we  find  him  arguing  on  one  page 
that  the  Trinity  was  too  grand  a  doctrine  to  have  been  con¬ 
ceived  by  man,  and  was  therefore  Divine ;  and  on  another 
page,  that  the  Incarnation  had  been  preconceived  by  man, 
and  is  therefore  to  be  accepted  as  Divine.  But  we  are  less 
concerned  with  the  fallacy  of  his  “  ready  replies  ”  than  with 
their  falsity ;  and  even  of  this  we  can  only  afford  space  for 
a  ver}r  few  specimens.  Here  is  one :  “  There  is  a  thousand 
times  more  proof  that  the  gospel  of  John  was  written  by  him 
than  there  is  that  the  Ava(3acn<;  was  written  by  Xenophon,  or 
the  Ars  Poetica  by  Horace.”  If  Dr.  Cumming  had  chosen 
Plato’s  Epistles  or  Anacreon’s  Poems,  instead  of  the  Anabasis 
or  the  Ars  Poetica,  he  would  have  reduced  the  extent  of  the 
falsehood,  and  would  have  furnished  a  ready  reply  which 
would  have  been  equally  effective  with  his  Sunday-school 
teachers  and  their  disputants.  Hence  we  conclude  this  prodi¬ 
gality  of  misstatement,  this  exuberance  of  mendacity,  is  an 
effervescence  of  zeal  in  majorem  gloriam  Dei.  Elsewhere  he 
tells  us  that  “the  idea  of  the  author  of  the  ‘Vestiges’  is, 
that  man  is  the  development  of  a  monkey,  that  the  monkey 
is  the  embryo  man,  so  that  if  you  keep  a  baboon  long  enough , 
it  will  develop  itself  into  a  man.”  How  well  Dr.  Cumming 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  123 


has  qualified  himself  to  judge  of  the  ideas  in  “that  very 
unphilosophical  book,”  as  he  pronounces  it,  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  he  implies  the  author  of  the  “ Vestiges’' 
to  have  originated  the  nebular  hypothesis. 

In  the  volume  from  which  the  last  extract  is  taken,  even 
the  hardihood  of  assertion  is  surpassed  by  the  suicidal  char¬ 
acter  of  the  argument.  It  is  called  “  The  Church  before  the 
Flood,”  and  is  devoted  chiefly  to  the  adjustment  of  the  ques¬ 
tion  between  the  Bible  and  Geology.  Keeping  within  the 
limits  we  have  prescribed  to  ourselves,  we  do  not  enter  into 
the  matter  of  this  discussion ;  we  merely  pause  a  little  over 
the  volume  in  order  to  point  out  Dr.  Cumming’s  mode  of 
treating  the  question.  He  first  tells  us  that  “  the  Bible  has 
not  a  single  scientific  error  in  it ;  ”  that  “  its  slightest  intima¬ 
tions  of  scientific  principles  or  natural  phenomena  have  in  every 
instance  been  demonstrated  to  be  exactly  and  strictly  true,”  and 
he  asks  :  — 

11  How  is  it  that  Moses,  with  no  greater  education  than  the  Hindoo 
or  the  ancient  philosopher,  has  written  his  hook,  touching  science  at 
a  thousand  points,  so  accurately  that  scientific  research  has  discov¬ 
ered  no  flaws  iu  it ;  and  yet  in  those  investigations  which  have  taken 
place  in  more  recent  centuries,  it  has  not  been  shown  that  he  has 
committed  one  single  error,  or  made  one  solitary  assertion  which  can 
be  proved  by  the  maturest  science,  or  by  the  most  eagle-eyed  philoso¬ 
pher,  to  be  incorrect,  scientifically  or  historically  ?  ” 

According  to  this,  the  relation  of  the  Bible  to  Science 
should  be  one  of  the  strong  points  of  apologists  for  Revela¬ 
tion  ;  the  scientific  accuracy  of  Moses  should  stand  at  the 
head  of  their  evidences;  and  they  might  urge  with  some 
cogency,  that  since  Aristotle,  who  devoted  himself  to  science, 
and  lived  many  ages  after  Moses,  does  little  else  than  err  in¬ 
geniously,  this  fact,  that  the  Jewish  Lawgiver,  though  touch¬ 
ing  science  at  a  thousand  points,  has  written  nothing  that  has 
not  been  “  demonstrated  to  be  exactly  and  strictly  true,”  is 
an  irrefragable  proof  of  his  having  derived  his  knowledge 
from  a  supernatural  source.  How  does  it  happen,  then,  that 
Dr.  Gumming  forsakes  this  strong  position  ?  How  is  it  that 


124 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


we  find  him,  some  pages  further  on,  engaged  in  reconciling 
Genesis  with  the  discoveries  of  science,  by  means  of  imagi¬ 
native  hypotheses  and  feats  of  “  interpretation  ”  ?  Surely, 
that  which  has  been  demonstrated  to  be  exactly  and  strictly 
true  does  not  require  hypothesis  and  critical  argument,  in 
order  to  show  that  it  may  possibly  agree  with  those  very  dis¬ 
coveries  by  means  of  which  its  exact  and  strict  truth  has 
been  demonstrated.  And  why  should  Dr.  Cumming  suppose, 
as  we  shall  presently  find  him  supposing,  that  men  of  science 
hesitate  to  accept  the  Bible,  because  it  appears  to  contradict 
their  discoveries  ?  By  his  own  statement,  that  appearance  of 
contradiction  does  not  exist ;  on  the  contrary,  it  has  been 
demonstrated  that  the  Bible  precisely  agrees  with  their  dis¬ 
coveries.  Perhaps,  however,  in  saying  of  the  Bible  that  its 
“  slightest  intimations  of  scientific  principles  or  natural  phe¬ 
nomena  have  in  every  instance  been  demonstrated  to  be 
exactly  and  strictly  true,”  Dr.  Cumming  merely  means  to  im¬ 
ply  that  theologians  have  found  out  a  way  of  explaining  the 
biblical  text  so  that  it  no  longer,  in  their  opinion,  appears  to 
be  in  contradiction  with  the  discoveries  of  science.  One  of 
two  things,  therefore :  either  he  uses  language  without  the 
slightest  appreciation  of  its  real  meaning ;  or  the  assertions 
he  makes  on  one  page  are  directly  contradicted  by  the  argu¬ 
ments  he  urges  on  another. 

Dr.  Cumming’s  principles  —  or,  we  should  rather  say,  con¬ 
fused  notions  —  of  biblical  interpretation,  as  exhibited  in 
this  volume,  are  particularly  significant  of  his  mental  calibre. 
He  says  : 1  “  Men  of  science,  who  are  full  of  scientific  investi¬ 
gation  and  enamored  of  scientific  discovery,  will  hesitate  be¬ 
fore  they  accept  a  book  which,  they  think,  contradicts  the 
plainest  and  the  most  unequivocal  disclosures  they  have 
made  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth  or  among  the  stars  of  the 
sky.  To  all  these  we  answer,  as  we  have  already  indicated, 
there  is  not  the  least  dissonance  between  God’s  written  book 
and  the  most  mature  discoveries  of  geological  science.  One 
thing,  however,  there  may  be ;  there  may  be  a  contradiction 
1  Church  before  the  Flood,  p  93. 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  125 


between  the  discoveries  of  geology  and  our  preconceived  inter¬ 
pretations  of  the  Bible.  But  this  is  not  because  the  Bible  is 
wrong,  but  because  our  interpretation  is  wrong.”  (The  ital- 
ics  in  all  cases  are  our  own.) 

Elsewhere  he  says :  “  It  seems  to  me  plainly  evident  that 
the  record  of  Genesis,  when  read  fairly  and  not  in  the  light 
of  our  prejudices,  —  and,  mind  you,  the  essence  of  Popery  is  to 
read  the  Bible  in  the  light  of  our  opinions,  instead  of  viewing 
our  opinions  in  the  light  of  the  Bible,  in  its  plain  and  obvious 
sense,  —  falls  in  perfectly  with  the  assertion  of  geologists.” 

On  comparing  these  two  passages,  we  gather  that  when  Dr. 
Cumming,  under  stress  of  geological  discovery,  assigns  to  the 
biblical  text  a  meaning  entirely  different  from  that  which,  on 
his  own  showing,  was  universally  ascribed  to  it  for  more  than 
three  thousand  years,  he  regards  himself  as  “  viewing  his 
opinions  in  the  light  of  the  Bible  in  its  plain  and  obvious 
sense”!  Now  he  is  reduced  to  one  of  two  alternatives: 
either  he  must  hold  that  the  “  plain  and  obvious  meaning  ” 
of  the  whole  Bible  differs  from  age  to  age,  so  that  the  cri¬ 
terion  of  its  meaning  lies  in  the  sum  of  knowledge  possessed 
by  each  successive  age,  — the  Bible  being  an  elastic  garment 
for  the  growing  thought  of  mankind;  or  he  must  hold  that 
some  portions  are  amenable  to  this  criterion,  and  others  not 
so.  In  the  former  case  he  accepts  the  principle  of  interpre¬ 
tation  adopted  by  the  early  German  rationalists ;  in  the  latter 
case  he  has  to  show  a  further  criterion  by  which  we  can 
judge  what  parts  of  the  Bible  are  elastic  and  what  rigid.  If 
he  says  that  the  interpretation  of  the  text  is  rigid  wherever 
it  treats  of  doctrines  necessary  to  salvation,  we  answer  that 
for  doctrines  to  be  necessary  to  salvation  they  must  first  be 
true ;  and  in  order  to  be  true,  according  to  his  own  principle, 
they  must  be  founded  on  a  correct  interpretation  of  the  bibli¬ 
cal  text.  Thus  he  makes  the  necessity  of  doctrines  to  salva¬ 
tion  the  criterion  of  infallible  interpretation,  and  infallible 
interpretation  the  criterion  of  doctrines  being  necessary  to 
salvation.  He  is  whirled  round  in  a  circle,  having,  by  admit¬ 
ting  the  principle  of  novelty  in  interpretation,  completely 


126 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


deprived  himself  of  a  basis.  That  he  should  seize  the  very 
moment  in  which  he  is  most  palpably  betraying  that  he  has 
no  test  of  biblical  truth  beyond  his  own  opinion,  as  an  appro¬ 
priate  occasion  for  flinging  the  rather  novel  reproach  against 
Popery  that  its  essence  is  to  “  read  the  Bible  in  the  light  of 
our  opinions,”  would  be  an  almost  pathetic  self-exposure,  if 
it  were  not  disgusting.  Imbecility  that  is  not  even  meek 
ceases  to  be  pitiable  and  becomes  simply  odious. 

Parenthetic  lashes  of  this  kind  against  Popery  are  very 
frequent  with  Dr.  Cumming,  and  occur  even  in  his  more  de¬ 
vout  passages,  where  their  introduction  must  surely  disturb 
the  spiritual  exercises  of  his  hearers.  Indeed,  Roman  Cath¬ 
olics  fare  worse  with  him  even  than  infidels.  Infidels  are  the 
small  vermin,  —  the  mice  to  be  bagged  en  passant.  The  main 
object  of  his  chase  —  the  rats  which  are  to  be  nailed  up  as 
trophies  —  are  the  Roman  Catholics.  Romanism  is  the  mas¬ 
terpiece  of  Satan ;  but  reassure  yourselves  !  Dr.  Cumming 
has  been  created.  Antichrist  is  enthroned  in  the  Vatican ; 
but  he  is  stoutly  withstood  by  the  Boanerges  of  Crown  Court. 
The  personality  of  Satan,  as  might  be  expected,  is  a  very 
prominent  tenet  in  Dr.  Cumming’s  discourses ;  those  who 
doubt  it  are,  he  thinks,  “  generally  specimens  of  the  victims 
of  Satan  as  a  triumphant  seducer ;  ”  and  it  is  through  the 
medium  of  this  doctrine  that  he  habitually  contemplates 
Roman  Catholics.  They  are  the  puppets  of  which  the  Devil 
holds  the  strings.  It  is  only  exceptionally  that  he  speaks  of 
them  as  fellow-men,  acted  on  by  the  same  desires,  fears,  and 
hopes  as  himself ;  his  rule  is  to  hold  them  up  to  his  hearers 
as  foredoomed  instruments  of  Satan,  and  vessels  of  wrath. 
If  he  is  obliged  to  admit  that  they  are  “no  shams,”  that  they 
are  “thoroughly  in  earnest,”  —  that  is  because  they  are  in¬ 
spired  by  hell,  because  they  are  under  an  “  infra-natural  ” 
influence.  If  their  missionaries  are  found  wherever  Protes¬ 
tant  missionaries  go,  this  zeal  in  propagating  their  faith  is 
not  in  them  a  consistent  virtue,  as  it  is  in  Protestants,  but  a 
“  melancholy  fact,”  affording  additional  evidence  that  they 
are  instigated  and  assisted  by  the  Devil,  And  Dr.  Cumming 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  GUMMING.  127 


is  inclined  to  think  that  they  work  miracles,  because  that  is 
no  more  than  might  be  expected  from  the  known  ability  of 
Satan,  who  inspires  them.1  He  admits,  indeed,  that  “  there 
is  a  fragment  of  the  Church  of  Christ  in  the  very  bosom  of 
that  awful  apostasy,”  2  and  that  there  are  members  of  the 
Church  of  Rome  in  glory ;  but  this  admission  is  rare  and  epi¬ 
sodical,  —  is  a  declaration,  pro  forma ,  about  as  influential  on 
the  general  disposition  and  habits  as  an  aristocrat’s  profession 
of  democracy. 

This  leads  us  to  mention  another  conspicuous  characteristic 
of  Dr.  Cumming’s  teaching,  —  the  absence  of  genuine  charity . 
It  is  true  that  he  makes  large  profession  of  tolerance  and 
liberality  within  a  certain  circle ;  he  exhorts  Christians  to 
unity  ;  he  would  have  Churchmen  fraternize  with  Dissenters, 
and  exhorts  these  two  branches  of  God’s  family  to  defer  the 
settlement  of  their  differences  till  the  millennium.  But  the 
love  thus  taught  is  the  love  of  the  clan ,  which  is  the  correla¬ 
tive  of  antagonism  to  the  rest  of  mankind.  It  is  not  sym¬ 
pathy  and  helpfulness  towards  men  as  men,  but  towards 
men  as  Christians,  and  as  Christians  in  the  sense  of  a  small 
minority.  Dr.  Cumming’s  religion  may  demand  a  tribute  of 
love,  but  it  gives  a  charter  to  hatred ;  it  may  enjoin  charity, 
but  it  fosters  all  uncharitableness.  If  I  believe  that  God 
tells  me  to  love  my  enemies,  but  at  the  same  time  hates  his 
own  enemies  and  requires  me  to  have  one  will  with  him, 
which  has  the  larger  scope,  love  or  hatred  ?  And  we  refer 
to  those  pages  of  Dr.  Cumming’s  in  which  he  opposes  Roman 
Catholics,  Puseyites,  and  infidels,  —  pages  which  form  the 
larger  proportion  of  what  he  has  published,  —  for  proof  that 
the  idea  of  God  which  both  the  logic  and  spirit  of  his  dis¬ 
courses  keep  present  to  his  hearers,  is  that  of  a  God  who 
hates  his  enemies,  a  God  who  teaches  love  by  fierce  denun¬ 
ciations  of  wrath,  a  God  who  encourages  obedience  to  his 
precepts  by  elaborately  revealing  to  us  that  his  own  govern¬ 
ment  is  in  precise  opposition  to  those  precepts.  We  know 
the  usual  evasions  on  this  subject.  We  know  Dr.  Cumming 
1  Signs  of  the  Times,  p.  38.  2  Apoc.  Sketches,  p.  24o. 


128 


ESSAYS  OF  GEOKGE  ELIOT. 


would  say  that  even  Koman  Catholics  are  to  be  loved  and 
succored  as  men;  that  he  would  help  even  that  “unclean 
spirit/’  Cardinal  Wiseman,  out  of  a  ditch.  But  who  that  is 
in  the  slightest  degree  acquainted  with  the  action  of  the 
human  mind,  will  believe  that  any  genuine  and  large  charity 
can  grow  out  of  an  exercise  of  love  which  is  always  to  have 
an  arriere-pensee  of  hatred  ?  Of  what  quality  would  be  the 
conjugal  love  of  a  husband  who  loved  his  spouse  as  a  wife, 
but  hated  her  as  a  woman  ?  It  is  reserved  for  the  regenerate 
mind,  according  to  Dr.  Cumming’s  conception  of  it,  to  be 
“  wise,  amazed,  temperate  and  furious,  loyal  and  neutral,  in  a 
moment.”  Precepts  of  charity  uttered  with  faint  breath  at 
the  end  of  a  sermon  are  perfectly  futile,  when  all  the  force  of 
the  lungs  has  been  spent  in  keeping  the  hearer’s  mind  fixed 
on  the  conception  of  his  fellow-men,  not  as  fellow-sinners 
and  fellow-sufferers,  but  as  agents  of  hell,  as  automata 
through  whom  Satan  plays  his  game  upon  earth,  —  not  on 
objects  which  call  forth  their  reverence,  their  love,  their  hope 
of  good  even  in  the  most  strayed  and  perverted,  but  on  a 
minute  identification  of  human  things  with  such  symbols  as 
the  scarlet  whore,  the  beast  out  of  the  abyss,  scorpions  whose 
sting  is  in  their  tails,  men  who  have  the  mark  of  the  beast, 
and  unclean  spirits  like  frogs.  You  might  as  well  attempt 
to  educate  a  child’s  sense  of  beauty  by  hanging  its  nursery 
with  the  horrible  and  grotesque  pictures  in  which  the  early 
painters  represented  the  Last  Judgment,  as  expect  Christian 
graces  to  flourish  on  that  prophetic  interpretation  which  Dr. 
Cumming  offers  as  the  principal  nutriment  of  his  flock.  Quite 
apart  from  the  critical  basis  of  that  interpretation,  quite  apart 
from  the  degree  of  truth  there  may  be  in  Dr.  Cumming’s 
prognostications,  —  questions  into  which  we  do  not  choose  to 
enter, — his  use  of  prophecy  must  be  a  priori  condemned  in 
the  judgment  of  right-minded  persons,  by  its  results  as  testi¬ 
fied  in  the  net  moral  effect  of  his  sermons.  The  best  minds 
that  accept  Christianity  as  a  divinely  inspired  system  be¬ 
lieve  that  the  great  end  of  the  Gospel  is  not  merely  the 
saving  but  the  educating  of  men’s  souls,  the  creating  within 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  I)R.  CUMMING.  129 


them  of  holy  dispositions,  the  subduing  of  egoistical  'preten¬ 
sions,  and  the  perpetual  enhancing  of  the  desire  that  the  will 
of  God  —  a  will  synonymous  with  goodness  and  truth  —  may 
be  done  on  earth.  But  what  relation  to  all  this  has  a  system 
of  interpretation  which  keeps  the  mind  of  the  Christian  in 
the  position  of  a  spectator  at  a  gladiatorial  show,  of  which 
Satan  is  the  wild  beast  in  the  shape  of  the  great  red  dragon, 
and  two  thirds  of  mankind  the  victims,  —  the  whole  provided 
and  got  up  by  God  for  the  edification  of  the  saints  ?  The 
demonstration  that  the  Second  Advent  is  at  hand,  if  true, 
can  have  no  really  holy,  spiritual  effect ;  the  highest  state  of 
mind  inculcated  by  the  Gospel  is  resignation  to  the  disposal 
of  God’s  providence,  —  “  Whether  we  live,  we  live  unto  the 
Lord ;  whether  we  die,  we  die  unto  the  Lord,”  —  not  an  eager¬ 
ness  to  see  a  temporal  manifestation  which  shall  confound 
the  enemies  of  God  and  give  exaltation  to  the  saints ;  it  is  to 
dwell  in  Christ  by  spiritual  communion  with  his  nature,  not 
to  fix  the  date  when  he  shall  appear  in  the  sky.  Dr.  Cum- 
miug’s  delight  in  shadowing  forth  the  downfall  of  the  Man 
of  Sin,  in  prognosticating  the  battle  of  Gog  and  Magog,  and 
in  advertising  the  premillennial  Advent,  is  simply  the  trans¬ 
portation  of  political  passions  on  to  a  so-called  religious  plat¬ 
form;  it  is  the  anticipation  of  the  triumph  of  “our  party,” 
accomplished  by  our  principal  men  being  “  sent  for  ”  into  the 
clouds.  Let  us  be  understood  to  speak  in  all  seriousness. 
If  we  were  in  search  of  amusement,  we  should  not  seek  for  it 
by  examining  Dr.  Cumming’s  works  in  order  to  ridicule  them. 
We  are  simply  discharging  a  disagreeable  duty  in  delivering 
our  opinion  that,  judged  by  the  highest  standard  even  of  or¬ 
thodox  Christianity,  they  are  little  calculated  to  produce 

“  A  closer  walk  with  God, 

A  cairn  and  heavenly  frame ;  ” 

but  are  more  likely  to  nourish  egoistic  complacency  and  pre¬ 
tension,  a  hard  and  condemnatory  spirit  towards  one’s  fellow- 
men,  and  a  busy  occupation  with  the  minutiae  of  events, 
instead  of  a  reverent  contemplation  of  great  facts  and  a  wise 

VOL.  IX.  # 


130 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


application  of  great  principles.  It  would  be  idle  to  consider 
Dr.  Cumming’s  theory  of  prophecy  in  any  other  light ;  as  a 
philosophy  of  history  or  a  specimen  of  biblical  interpreta¬ 
tion,  it  bears  about  the  same  relation  to  the  extension  of  gen¬ 
uine  knowledge  as  the  astrological  “  house  ”  in  the  heavens 
bears  to  the  true  structure  and  relations  of  the  universe. 

The  slight  degree  in  which  Dr.  Cumming’s  faith  is  imbued 
with  truly  human  sympathies  is  exhibited  in  the  way  he 
treats  the  doctrine  of  Eternal  Punishment.  Here  a  little  of 
that  readiness  to  strain  the  letter  of  the  Scriptures  which  he 
so  often  manifests  when  his  object  is  to  prove  a  point  against 
Romanism  would  have  been  an  amiable  frailty  if  it  had  been 
.applied  on  the  side  of  mercy.  When  he  is  bent  on  proving 
that  the  prophecy  concerning  the  Man  of  Sin,  in  the  Second 
Epistle  to  the  Tliessalonians,  refers  to  the  Pope,  he  can  ex¬ 
tort  from  the  innocent  word  KaOlaai  the  meaning  cathedrize, 
though  why  we  are  to  translate  “  He  as  God  cathedrizes  in 
the  temple  of  God,”  any  more  than  we  are  to  translate  “  Ca¬ 
thedrize  here,  while  I  go  and  pray  yonder,”  it  is  for  Dr.  Cum- 
ming  to  show  more  clearly  than  he  has  yet  done.  But  when 
rigorous  literality  will  favor  the  conclusion  that  the  greater 
proportion  of  the  human  race  will  be  eternally  miserable,  — 
then  he  is  rigorously  literal. 

He  says  :  “  The  Greek  words,  eis  tovs  alwvas  tw  alwvwv,  here 
translated  ‘  everlasting/  signify  literally  ‘unto  the  ages  of 
ages;’  aid  w v,  ‘always  being,’  that  is,  everlasting,  ceaseless 
existence.  Plato  uses  the  word  in  this  sense  when  he  says, 
‘The  Gods  that  live  forever.’  But  I  must  also  admit,  that 
this  word  is  used  several  times  in  a  limited  extent,  —  as,  for 
instance,  ‘The  everlasting  hills.’  Of  course,  this  does  not 
mean  that  there  never  will  be  a  time  when  the  hills  will 
cease  to  stand;  the  expression  here  is  evidently  figurative, 
but  it  implies  eternity.  The  hills  shall  remain  as  long  as 
that  earth  lasts,  and  no  hand  has  power  to  remove  them  but 
that  Eternal  One  which  first  called  them  into  being ;  so  the 
state  of  the  soul  remains  the  same  after  death  as  long  as  the 
soul  exists,  and  no  one  has  power  to  alter  it.  The  same 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  GUMMING.  131 


word  is  often  applied  to  denote  the  existence  of  God,  —  ‘the 
Eternal  God.’  Can  we  limit  the  word  when  applied  to  him  ? 
Because  occasionally  used  in  a  limited  sense,  we  must  not  infer 
it  is  always  so.  ‘Everlasting’  plainly  means  in  Scripture 
‘  without  end ;  ’  it  is  only  to  be  explained  figuratively  when 
it  is  evident  it  cannot  be  interpreted  in  any  other  way.” 

We  do  not  discuss  whether  Dr.  Cumming’s  interpretation 
accords  with  the  meaning  of  the  New  Testament  writers  :  we 
simply  point  to  the  fact  that  the  text  becomes  elastic  for  him 
when  he  wants  freer  play  for  his  prejudices,  while  he  makes 
it  an  adamantine  barrier  against  the  admission  that  mercy 
will  ultimately  triumph,  —  that  God,  i.  e.,  Love,  will  be  all  in 
all.  He  assures  us  that  he  does  not  “delight  to  dwell  on  the 
misery  of  the  lost ;  ”  and  we  believe  him.  That  misery  does 
not  seem  to  be  a  question  of  feeling  with  him,  either  one  way 
or  the  other.  He  does  not  merely  resign  himself  to  the  aw¬ 
ful  mystery  of  eternal  punishment ;  he  contends  for  it.  Do 
we  object,  he  asks,1  to  everlasting  happiness  ?  then  why  ob¬ 
ject  to  everlasting  misery  ?  —  reasoning  which  is  perhaps 
felt  to  be  cogent  by  theologians  who  anticipate  the  everlast¬ 
ing  happiness  for  themselves  and  the  everlasting  misery  for 
their  neighbors. 

The  compassion  of  some  Christians  has  been  glad  to  take 
refuge  in  the  opinion  that  the  Bible  allows  the  supposition 
of  annihilation  for  the  impenitent;  but  the  rigid  sequence  of 
Dr.  Cumming’s  reasoning  will  not  admit  of  this  idea.  He  sees 
that  flax  is  made  into  linen,  and  linen  into  paper ;  that  paper, 
when  burnt,  partly  ascends  as  smoke  and  then  again  descends 
in  rain  or  in  dust  and  carbon.  “Not  one  particle  of  the 
original  flax  is  lost,  although  there  may  be  not  one  particle 
that  has  not  undergone  an  entire  change  :  annihilation  is  not, 
but  change  of  form  is.  It  will  be  thus  with  our  bodies  at  the 
resurrection.  The  death  of  the  body  means  not  annihilation. 
Not  one  feature  of  the  face  will  be  annihilated.”  Having  es¬ 
tablished  the  perpetuity  of  the  body  by  this  close  and  clear 
analogy,  namely,  that  as  there  is  a  total  change  in  the  parti- 

1  Mail,  of  Christ.  Evidences,  p.  l&*. 


132 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


cles  of  flax  in  consequence  of  which  they  no  longer  appear  as 
flax,  so  there  will  not  be  a  total  change  in  the  particles  of  the 
human  body,  but  they  will  reappear  as  the  human  body,  he 
does  not  seem  to  consider  that  the  perpetuity  of  the  body  in¬ 
volves  the  perpetuity  of  the  soul,  but  requires  separate  evi¬ 
dence  for  this,  and  finds  such  evidence  by  begging  the  very 
question  at  issue ;  namely,  by  asserting  that  the  text  of  the 
Scriptures  implies  “  the  perpetuity  of  the  punishment  of  the 
lost,  and  the  consciousness  of  the  punishment  which  they 
endure.”  Yet  it  is  drivelling  like  this  which  is  listened  to 
and  lauded  as  eloquence  by  hundreds,  and  which  a  Doctor  of 
Divinity  can  believe  that  he  has  his  “  reward  as  a  saint  ”  for 
preaching  and  publishing ! 

One  more  characteristic  of  Dr.  Cumming’s  writings,  and 
we  have  done.  This  is  the  perverted  moral  judgment  that 
everywhere  reigns  in  them.  Not  that  this  perversion  is 
peculiar  to  Dr.  Cumming :  it  belongs  to  the  dogmatic  system 
which  he  shares  with  all  evangelical  believers.  But  the  ab¬ 
stract  tendencies  of  systems  are  represented  in  very  different 
degrees  according  to  the  different  characters  of  those  who 
embrace  them,  just  as  the  same  food  tells  differently  on  dif¬ 
ferent  constitutions ;  and  there  are  certain  qualities  in  Dr. 
Cumming  that  cause  the  perversion  of  which  we  speak  to 
exhibit  itself  with  peculiar  prominence  in  his  teaching.  A 
single  extract  will  enable  us  to  explain  what  we  mean. 

“The  ‘thoughts’  are  evil.  If  it  were  possible  for  human  eye  to 
discern  and  to  detect  the  thoughts  that  flutter  around  the  heart  of  an  un¬ 
regenerate  man,  to  mark  their  hue  and  their  multitude,  it  would  be 
found  that  they  are  indeed  ‘  evil.’  We  speak  not  of  the  thief,  and  the 
murderer,  and  the  adulterer,  and  such  like,  whose  crimes  draw  down 
the  cognizance  of  earthly  tribunals,  and  whose  unenviable  character  it 
is  to  take  the  lead  in  the  paths  of  sin  ;  but  we  refer  to  the  men  who 
are  marked  out  by  their  practice  of  many  of  the  seemliest  moralities  of 
life,  —  by  the  exercise  of  the  kindliest  affections,  and  the  interchange 
of  the  sweetest  reciprocities,  —  and  of  these  men,  if  unrenewed  and 
unchanged,  we  pronounce  that  their  thoughts  are  evil.  To  ascertain 
this,  we  must  refer  to  the  object  around  which  our  thoughts  ought 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  138 


continually  to  circulate.  The  Scriptures  assert  that  this  object  is  the 
glory  of  God;  that  for  this  we  ought  to  think,  tcF act,  and  to  speak; 
and  that  in  thus  thinking,  acting,  and  speaking,  there  is  involved  the 
purest  and  most  enduring  bliss.  Now  it  will  be  found  true  of  the 
most  amiable  men,  that  with  all  their  good  society  and  kindliness  of 
heart,  and  all  their  strict  and  unbending  integrity,  they  never  or  rarely 
think  of  the  glory  of  God.  The  question  never  occurs  to  them,  Will 
this  redound  to  the  glory  of  God?  Will  this  make  his  name  more 
known,  his  being  more  loved,  his  praise  more  sung  ?  And  just  inas¬ 
much  as  their  every  thought  comes  short  of  this  lofty  aim,  in  so  much 
ioes  it  come  short  of  good,  and  entitle  itself  to  the  character  of  evil. 
If  the  glory  of  God  is  not  the  absorbing  and  the  influential  aim  of 
their  thoughts,  then  they  are  evil ;  but  God’s  glory  never  enters  into 
their  minds.  They  are  amiable,  because  it  chauces  to  be  one  of  the 
constitutional  tendencies  of  their  individual  character,  left  uneflaced  by 
the  Fall ;  and  they  are  just  and  upright,  because  they  have  perhaps  no 
occasion  to  be  otherwise,  or  find  it  subservient  to  their  interests  to  main¬ 
tain  such  a  character 1 

Again  we  read : 2  — 

11  There  are  traits  in  the  Christian  character  which  the  mere  worldly 
man  cannot  understand.  He  can  understand  the  outward  morality, 
but  he  cannot  understand  the  inner  spring  of  it :  he  can  understand 
Dorcas’  liberality  to  the  poor,  but  he  cannot  penetrate  the  ground  of 
Dorcas’  liberality.  Some  men  give  to  the  poor  because  they  are  os¬ 
tentatious ,  or  because  they  think  the  poor  will  ultimately  avenge  their 
neglect;  but  the  Christian  gives  to  the  poor ,  not  only  because  he  Ims 
sensibilities  like  other  men,  but  because,  ‘  inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  to  the 
least  of  these  my  brethren,  ye  did  it  unto  me.’  ” 

Before  entering  on  the  more  general  question  involved  in 
these  quotations,  we  must  point  to  the  clauses  we  have 
marked  with  italics,  where  Dr.  Cumming  appears  to  express 
sentiments  which,  we  are  happy  to  think,  are  not  shared  by 
the  majority  of  his  brethren  in  the  faith.  Dr.  Cumming,  it 
seems,  is  unable  to  conceive  that  the  natural  man  can  have 
any  other  motive  for  being  just  and  upright  than  that  it  is 
useless  to  be  otherwise,  or  that  a  character  for  honesty  is 


1  Qcc.  Disc.  voL  i.  p.  8. 


1  Ibid.  p.  230. 


134 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


profitable ;  according  to  his  experience,  between  the  feelings 
of  ostentation  anti  selfish  alarm  and  the  feeling  of  love  to 
Christ,  there  lie  no  sensibilities  which  can  lead  a  man  to  re¬ 
lieve  want.  Granting,  as  we  should  prefer  to  think,  that  it 
is  Dr.  Cumming’s  exposition  of  his  sentiments  which  is  defi¬ 
cient  rather  than  his  sentiments  themselves,  still  the  fact 
that  the  deficiency  lies  precisely  here,  and  that  he  can  over¬ 
look  it  not  only  in  the  haste  of  oral  delivery  but  in  the 
examination  of  proof-sheets,  is  strongly  significant  of  his 
mental  bias,  —  of  the  faint  degree  in  which  he  sympathizes 
with  the  disinterested  elements  of  human  feeling,  and  of  the 
fact,  which  we  are  about  to  dwell  upon,  that  those  feelings 
are  totally  absent  from  his  religious  theory.  Now,  Dr.  Cum- 
ming  invariably  assumes  that,  in  fulminating  against  those 
who  differ  from  him,  he  is  standing  on  a  moral  elevation  to 
which  they  are  compelled  reluctantly  to  look  up ;  that  his 
theory  of  motives  and  conduct  is  in  its  loftiness  and  purity  a 
perpetual  rebuke  to  their  low  and  vicious  desires  and  prac¬ 
tice.  It  is  time  he  should  be  told  that  the  reverse  is  the 
fact ;  that  there  are  men  who  do  not  merely  cast  a  superfi¬ 
cial  glance  at  his  doctrine,  and  fail  to  see  its  beauty  or  jus¬ 
tice,  but  who,  after  a  close  consideration  of  that  doctrine, 
pronounce  it  to  be  subversive  of  true  moral  development,  and 
therefore  positively  noxious.  Dr.  Cumming  is  fond  of  show¬ 
ing  up  the  teaching  of  Romanism,  and  accusing  it  of  under¬ 
mining  true  morality :  it  is  time  he  should  be  told  that  there 
is  a  large  body,  both  of  thinkers  and  practical  men,  who  hold 
precisely  the  same  opinion  of  his  own  teaching,  —  with  this 
difference,  that  they  do  not  regard  it  as  the  inspiration  of 
Satan,  but  as  the  natural  crop  of  a  human  mind  where  the 
soil  is  chiefly  made  up  of  egoistic  passions  and  dogmatic 
beliefs. 

Dr.  Cumming’s  theory,  as  we  have  seen,  is  that  actions  are 
good  or  evil  according  as  they  are  prompted  or  not  prompted 
by  an  exclusive  reference  to  the  “  glory  of  God.”  God,  then, 
in  Dr.  Cumming’s  conception,  is  a  being  who  has  no  pleasure 
in  the  exercise  of  love  and  truthfulness  and  justice,  consid- 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  135 

ered  as  affecting  the  well-being  of  his  creatures ;  he  has  sat¬ 
isfaction  in  us  only  in  so  far  as  we  exhaust  our  motives  and 
dispositions  of  all  relation  to  our  fellow-beings,  and  replace 
sympathy  with  men  by  anxiety  for  the  “  glory  of  God.”  The 
deed  of  Grace  Darling,  when  she  took  a  boat  in  the  storm  to 
rescue  drowning  men  and  women,  was  not  good  if  it  was 
only  compassion  that  nerved  her  arm  and  impelled  her  to 
brave  death  for  the  chance  of  saving  others ;  it  was  only  good 
if  she  asked  herself,  Will  this  redound  to  the  glory  of  God  ? 
The  man  who  endures  tortures  rather  than  betray  a  trust,  the 
man  who  spends  years  in  toil  in  order  to  discharge  an  obliga¬ 
tion  from  which  the  law  declares  him  free,  must  be  animated 
not  by  the  spirit  of  fidelity  to  his  fellow-man,  but  by  a  de¬ 
sire  to  make  “the  name  of  God  more  known.”  The  sweet 
charities  of  domestic  life  —  the  ready  hand  and  the  sooth¬ 
ing  word  in  sickness,  the  forbearance  towards  frailties,  the 
prompt  helpfulness  in  all  efforts  and  sympathy  in  all  joys, 
are  simply  evil  if  they  result  from  a  “constitutional  ten¬ 
dency,”  or  from  dispositions  disciplined  by  the  experience  of 
suffering  and  the  perception  of  moral  loveliness.  A  wife  is 
not  to  devote  herself  to  her  husband  out  of  love  to  him  and 
a  sense  of  the  duties  implied  by  a  close  relation,  —  she  is  to 
be  a  faithful  wife  for  the  glory  of  God ;  if  she  feels  her  nat¬ 
ural  affections  welling  up  too  strongly,  she  is  to  repress  them  ; 
it  will  not  do  to  act  from  natural  affection,  —  she  must  think 
of  the  glory  of  God.  A  man  is  to  guide  his  affairs  with  en¬ 
ergy  and  discretion,  not  from  an  honest  desire  to  fulfil  his 
responsibilities  as  a  member  of  society  and  a  father,  but  — 
that  “God’s  praise  may  be  sung.”  Dr.  Cumming’s  Christian 
pays  his  debts  for  the  glory  of  God  ;  were  it  not  for  the  coer¬ 
cion  of  that  supreme  motive,  it  would  be  evil  to  pay  them. 
A  man  is  not  to  be  just  from  a  feeling  of  justice ;  he  is  not 
to  help  his  fellow-men  out  of  good-will  to  his  fellow-men ;  he 
is  not  to  be  a  tender  husband  and  father  out  of  affection  :  all 
these  natural  muscles  and  fibres  are  to  be  torn  away  and  re¬ 
placed  by  a  patent  steel-spring,  —  anxiety  for  the  “  glory  of 
God.” 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


186 

Happily,  the  constitution  of  human  nature  forbids  the  corn* 
plete  prevalence  of  such  a  theory.  Fatally  powerful  as  re¬ 
ligious  systems  have  been,  human  nature  is  stronger  and 
wider  than  religious  systems,  and  though  dogmas  may  ham¬ 
per,  they  cannot  absolutely  repress  its  growth :  build  walls 
round  the  living  tree  as  you  will,  the  bricks  and  mortar  have 
by  and  by  to  give  way  before  the  slow  and  sure  operation  of 
the  sap.  But  next  to  that  hatred  of  the  enemies  of  God 
which  is  the  principle  of  persecution,  there  perhaps  has  been 
no  perversion  more  obstructive  of  true  moral  development 
than  this  substitution  of  a  reference  to  the  glory  of  God  for 
the  direct  promptings  of  the  sympathetic  feelings.  Benevo¬ 
lence  and  justice  are  strong  only  in  proportion  as  they  are 
directly  and  inevitably  called  into  activity  by  their  proper 
objects  :  pity  is  strong  only  because  we  are  strongly  impressed 
by  suffering ;  and  only  in  proportion  as  it  is  compassion  that 
speaks  through  the  eyes  when  we  soothe,  and  moves  the  arm 
when  we  succor,  is  a  deed  strictly  benevolent.  If  the  sooth¬ 
ing  or  the  succor  be  given  because  another  being  wishes  or 
approves  it,  the  deed  ceases  to  be  one  of  benevolence,  and 
becomes  one  of  deference,  of  obedience,  of  self-interest,  or 
vanity.  Accessory  motives  may  aid  in  producing  an  action , 
but  they  presuppose  the  weakness  of  the  direct  motive ; 
and  conversely,  when  the  direct  motive  is  strong,  the  action 
of  accessory  motives  will  be  excluded.  If,  then,  as  Dr. 
Cumming  inculcates,  the  glory  of  God  is  to  be  “  the  absorb¬ 
ing  and  the  influential  aim  ”  in  our  thoughts  and  actions,  this 
must  tend  to  neutralize  the  human  sympathies ;  the  stream 
of  feeling  will  be  diverted  from  its  natural  current  in  order 
to  feed  an  artificial  canal.  The  idea  of  God  is  really  moral 
in  its  influence  —  it  really  cherishes  all  that  is  best  and  love¬ 
liest  in  man  —  only  when  God  is  contemplated  as  sympathiz¬ 
ing  with  the  pure  elements  of  human  feeling,  as  possessing 
infinitely  all  those  attributes  which  we  recognize  to  be  moral 
in  humanity.  In  this  light,  the  idea  of  God  and  the  sense  of 
His  presence  intensify  all  noble  feeling,  and  encourage  all 
noble  effort,  on  the  same  principle  that  human  sympathy  is 


EVANGELICAL  TEACHING:  DR.  CUMMING.  137 


found  a  source  of  strength  :  the  brave  man  feels  braver  when 
he  knows  that  another  stout  heart  is  beating  time  with  his ; 
the  devoted  woman  who  is  wearing  out  her  years  in  patient 
effort  to  alleviate  suffering  or  save  vice  from  the  last  stages 
of  degradation,  finds  aid  in  the  pressure  of  a  friendly  hand 
which  tells  her  that  there  is  one  who  understands  her  deeds, 
and  in  her  place  would  do  the  like.  The  idea  of  a  God  who 
not  only  sympathizes  with  all  we  feel  and  endure  for  our 
fellow-men,  but  who  will  pour  new  life  into  our  too  languid 
love,  and  give  firmness  to  our  vacillating  purpose,  is  an  ex¬ 
tension  and  multiplication  of  the  effects  produced  by  human 
sympathy  ;  and  it  has  been  intensified  for  the  better  spirits 
who  have  been  under  the  influence  of  orthodox  Christianity 
by  the  contemplation  of  Jesus  as  “  God  manifest  in  the  flesh.” 
But  Dr.  Cumming’s  God  is  the  very  opposite  of  all  this.  He 
is  a  God  who,  instead  of  sharing  and  aiding  our  human  sym¬ 
pathies,  is  directly  in  collision  with  them ;  who,  instead  of 
strengthening  the  bond  between  man  and  man,  by  encourag¬ 
ing  the  sense  that  they  are  both  alike  the  objects  of  His  love 
and  care,  thrusts  Himself  between  them  and  forbids  them  to 
feel  for  each  other  except  as  they  have  relation  to  Him.  He 
is  a  God  who,  instead  of  adding  His  solar  force  to  swell  the 
tide  of  those  impulses  that  tend  to  give  humanity  a  common 
life  in  which  the  good  of  one  is  the  good  of  all,  commands  us 
to  check  those  impulses,  lest  they  should  prevent  us  from 
thinking  of  His  glory.  It  is  in  vain  for  Dr.  Cumming  to  say 
that  we  are  to  love  man  for  God’s  sake  :  with  the  conception 
of  God  which  his  teaching  presents,  the  love  of  man  for  God’s 
sake  involves,  as  his  writings  abundantly  show,  a  strong 
principle  of  hatred.  We  can  only  love  one  being  for  the 
sake  of  another  when  there  is  an  habitual  delight  in  associat¬ 
ing  the  idea  of  those  two  beings,  —  that  is,  when  the  object 
of  our  indirect  love  is  a  source  of  joy  and  honor  to  the  object 
of  our  direct  love ;  but,  according  to  Dr.  Cumming’s  theory, 
the  majority  of  mankind  —  the  majority  of  his  neighbors  — 
are  in  precisely  the  opposite  relation  to  God.  His  soul  has 
no  pleasure  in  them,  they  belong  more  to  Satan  than  to  Him. 


138 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


and  if  they  contribute  to  His  glory,  it  is  against  their  will. 
Dr.  Cumming  then  can  only  love  some  men  for  God’s  sake ; 
the  rest  he  must  in  consistency  hate  for  God’s  sake. 

There  must  be  many,  even  in  the  circle  of  Dr.  Cumming’s 
admirers,  who  would  be  revolted  by  the  doctrine  we  have 
just  exposed,  if  their  natural  good  sense  and  healthy  feeling 
were  not  early  stifled  by  dogmatic  beliefs,  and  their  reverence 
misled  by  pious  phrases.  But  as  it  is,  many  a  rational  ques¬ 
tion,  many  a  generous  instinct,  is  repelled  as  the  suggestion 
of  a  supernatural  enemy,  or  as  the  ebullition  of  human  pride 
and  corruption.  This  state  of  inward  contradiction  can  be 
put  an  end  to  only  by  the  conviction  that  the  free  and  dili¬ 
gent  exertion  of  the  intellect,  instead  of  being  a  sin,  is  part 
of  their  responsibility,  —  that  Bight  and  Beason  are  synony¬ 
mous.  The  fundamental  faith  for  man  is,  faith  in  the  result 
of  a  brave,  honest,  and  steady  use  of  all  his  faculties :  — 

“  Let  knowledge  grow  from  more  to  more, 

But  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell ; 

That  mind  and  soul  according  well 
May  make  one  music  as  before. 

But  vaster.” 

Before  taking  leave  of  Dr.  Cumming,  let  us  express  a  hope 
that  we  have  in  no  case  exaggerated  the  unfavorable  charac¬ 
ter  of  the  inferences  to  be  drawn  from  his  pages.  His  creed 
often  obliges  him  to  hope  the  worst  of  men,  and  exert  him¬ 
self  in  proving  that  the  worst  is  true ;  but  thus  far  we  are 
happier  than  he.  We  have  no  theory  which  requires  us  to 
attribute  unworthy  motives  to  Dr.  Cumming,  no  opinions, 
religious  or  irreligious,  which  can  make  it  a  gratification  to 
us  to  detect  him  in  delinquencies.  On  the  contrary,  the  bet¬ 
ter  we  are  able  to  think  of  him  as  a  man,  while  we  are  obliged 
to  disapprove  him  as  a  theologian,  the  stronger  will  be  the 
evidence  for  our  conviction  that  the  tendency  towards  good 
in  human  nature  has  a  force  which  no  creed  can  utterly  coun¬ 
teract,  and  which  ensures  the  ultimate  triumph  of  that  ten¬ 
dency  over  all  dogmatic  perversions. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


HERE  is  a  valuable  class  of  books  on  great  subjects 


-L  which  have  something  of  the  character  and  functions  of 
good  popular  lecturing.  They  are  not  original,  not  subtle, 
not  of  close  logical  texture,  not  exquisite  either  in  thought 
or  style ;  but  by  virtue  of  these  negatives  they  are  all  the 
more  fit  to  act  on  the  average  intelligence.  They  have 
enough  of  organizing  purpose  in  them  to  make  their  facts 
illustrative,  and  to  leave  a  distinct  result  in  the  mind  even 
when  most  of  the  facts  are  forgotten ;  and  they  have  enough 
of  vagueness  and  vacillation  in  their  theory  to  win  them  ready 
acceptance  from  a  mixed  audience.  The  vagueness  and  vacil¬ 
lation  are  not  devices  of  timidity ;  they  are  the  honest  result 
of  the  writer’s  own  mental  character,  which  adapts  him  to  be 
the  instructor  and  the  favorite  of  the  “general  reader.”  For 
the  most  part,  the  general  reader  of  the  present  day  does  not 
exactly  know  what  distance  he  goes ;  he  only  knows  that  he 
does  not  go  “too  far.”  Of  any  remarkable  thinker,  whose 
writings  have  excited  controversy,  he  likes  to  have  it  said 
that  “his  errors  are  to  be  deplored,”  leaving  it  not  too  cer¬ 
tain  what  those  errors  are ;  he  is  fond  of  what  may  be  called 
disembodied  opinions,  that  float  in  vapory  phrases  above  all 
systems  of  thought  or  action;  he  likes  an  undefined  Chris¬ 
tianity  which  opposes  itself  to  nothing  in  particular,  an  unde¬ 
fined  education  of  the  people,  an  undefined  amelioration  of 
all  things  :  in  fact,  he  likes  sound  views,  —  nothing  extreme, 
but  something  between  the  excesses  of  the  past  and  the  ex¬ 
cesses  of  the  present.  This  modern  type  of  the  general  reader 
may  be  known  in  conversation  by  the  cordiality  with  which 


140 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


he  assents  to  indistinct,  blurred  statements :  say  that  black 
is  black,  he  will  shake  his  head  and  hardly  think  it  $  say  that 
black  is  not  so  very  black,  he  will  reply,  “  Exactly.”  He  has 
no  hesitation,  if  you  wish  it,  even  to  get  up  a  public  meeting 
and  express  his  conviction  that  at  times,  and  within  certain 
limits,  the  radii  of  a  circle  have  a  tendency  to  be  equal ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  would  urge  that  the  spirit  of  geometry 
may  be  carried  a  little  too  far.  His  only  bigotry  is  a  bigotry 
against  any  clearly  defined  scepticism,  but  belonging  to  a  lack 
of  coherent  thought,  —  a  spongy  texture  of  mind,  that  gravi¬ 
tates  strongly  to  nothing.  The  one  thing  he  is  stanch  for, 
is  the  utmost  liberty  of  private  haziness. 

But  precisely  these  characteristics  of  the  general  reader, 
rendering  him  incapable  of  assimilating  ideas  unless  they  are 
administered  in  a  highly  diluted  form,  make  it  a  matter  of 
rejoicing  that  there  are  clever,  fair-minded  men,  who  will 
write  books  for  him,  —  men  very  much  above  him  in  knowl¬ 
edge  and  ability,  but  not  too  remote  from  him  in  their  habits 
of  thinking,  and  who  can  thus  prepare  for  him  infusions  of 
history  and  science,  that  will  leave  some  solidifying  deposit, 
and  save  him  from  a  fatal  softening  of  the  intellectual  skele¬ 
ton.  Among  such  serviceable  writers,  Mr.  Lecky’s  “  History 
of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Rationalism  in  Eu¬ 
rope  ”  entitles  him  to  a  high  place.  He  has  prepared  him¬ 
self  for  its  production  by  an  unusual  amount  of  well-directed 
reading ;  he  has  chosen  his  facts  and  quotations  with  much 
judgment ;  and  he  gives  proofs  of  those  important  moral  qual¬ 
ifications,  impartiality,  seriousness,  and  modesty.  This  praise 
is  chiefly  applicable  to  the  long  chapter  on  the  History  of 
Magic  and  Witchcraft,  which  opens  the  work,  and  to  the  two 
chapters  on  the  Antecedents  and  History  of  Persecution,  which 
occur,  the  one  at  the  end  of  the  first  volume,  the  other  at  the 
beginning  of  the  second.  In  these  chapters  Mr.  Lecky  has  a 
narrower  and  better  traced  path  before  him  than  in  other 
portions  of  his  work  ;  he  is  more  occupied  with  presenting  a 
particular  class  of  facts  in  their  historical  sequence,  and  in 
their  relation  to  certain  grand  tide-marks  of  opinion,  than 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


141 


with  disquisition ;  and  his  writing  is  freer  than  elsewhere 
from  an  apparent  confusedness  of  thought,  and  an  exuber 
ance  of  approximative  phrases,  which  can  be  serviceable  in 
no  other  way  than  as  diluents  needful  for  the  sort  of  reader 
we  have  just  described. 

The  history  of  magic  and  witchcraft  has  been  judiciously 
chosen  by  Mr.  Lecky,  as  the  subject  of  his  first  section  on 
the  declining  sense  of  the  miraculous,  because  it  is  strikingly 
illustrative  of  a  position,  with  the  truth  of  which  he  is 
strongly  impressed,  though  he  does  not  always  treat  of  it 
with  desirable  clearness  and  precision ;  namely,  that  certain 
beliefs  become  obsolete,  not  in  consequence  of  direct  argu¬ 
ments  against  them,  but  because  of  their  incongruity  with 
prevalent  habits  of  thought.  Here  is  his  statement  of  the 
two  classes  of  influences  by  which  the  mass  of  men,  in 
what  is  called  civilized  society,  get  their  beliefs  gradually 
modified :  — 

11  If  we  ask  why  it  is  that  the  world  has  rejected  what  was  once  so 
universally  and  so  intensely  believed,  why  a  narrative  of  an  old  woman 
who  had  been  seen  riding  on  a  broomstick,  or  who  was  proved  to  have 
transformed  herself  into  a  wolf,  and  to  have  devoured  the  flocks  of  her 
neighbors,  is  deemed  so  entirely  incredible,  most  persons  would  proba¬ 
bly  be  unable  to  give  a  very  definite  answer  to  the  question.  It  is  not 
because  we  have  examined  the  evidence  and  foimd  it  insufficient,  for  the 
disbelief  always  precedes,  when  it  does  not  prevent,  examination.  It 
is  rather  because  the  idea  of  absurdity  is  so  strongly  attached  to  such 
narratives,  that  it  is  difficult  even  to  consider  them  with  gravity.  Yet 
at  one  time  no  such  improbability  was  felt,  and  hundreds  of  persons 
have  been  burnt  simply  on  the  two  grounds  I  have  mentioned. 

u  When  so  complete  a  change  takes  place  in  public  opinion,  it  may 
be  ascribed  to  one  or  other  of  two  causes.  It  may  be  the  result  of  a 
controversy  which  has  conclusively  settled  the  question,  establishing  to 
the  satisfaction  of  all  parties  a  clear  preponderance  of  argument  or  fact 
in  favor  of  one  opinion,  and  making  that  opinion  a  truism  which  is 
accepted  by  all  enlightened  men,  even  though  they  have  not  them¬ 
selves  examined  the  evidence  on  which  it  rests.  Thus,  if  any  one  in  a 
company  of  ordinarily  educated  persons  were  to  deny  the  motion  of  the 
earth  or  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  his  statement  would  be  received 


142 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


with  derision,  though  it  is  probable  that  some  of  his  audience  would 
be  unable  to  demonstrate  the  first  truth,  and  that  very  few  of  them 
could  give  sufficient  reasons  for  the  second.  They  may  not  themselves 
be  able  to  defend  their  position ;  hut  they  are  aware  that,  at  certain 
known  periods  of  history,  controversies  on  those  subjects  took  place, 
and  that  known  writers  then  brought  forward  some  definite  arguments 
or  experiments,  which  were  ultimately  accepted  by  the  -whole  learned 
world  as  rigid  and  conclusive  demonstrations.  It  is  possible,  also,  for 
as  complete  a  change  to  be  effected  by  what  is  called  the  spirit  of  the 
age.  The  general  intellectual  tendencies  pervading  the  literature  of  a 
century  profoundly  modify  the  character  of  the  public  mind.  They 
form  a  new  tone  and  habit  of  thought.  They  alter  the  measure  of 
probability.  They  create  new  attractions  aud  new  antipathies,  and 
they  eventually  cause  as  absolute  a  rejection  of  certain  old  opinions  as 
could  be  produced  by  the  most  cogent  and  definite  arguments.” 

Mr.  Lecky  proceeds  to  some  questionable  views  concerning 
the  evidences  of  witchcraft,  which  seem  to  be  irreconcilable 
even  with  his  own  remarks  later  on ;  but  they  lead  him  to 
the  statement,  thoroughly  made  out  by  his  historical  survey 
that  “  the  movement  was  mainly  silent,  unargumentative,  and 
insensible ;  that  men  came  gradually  to  disbelieve  in  witch¬ 
craft,  because  they  came  gradually  to  look  upon  it  as  absurd ; 
and  that  this  new  tone  of  thought  appeared,  first  of  all,  in 
those  who  were  least  subject  to  theological  influences,  and 
soon  spread  through  the  educated  laity,  and,  last  of  all,  took 
possession  of  the  clergy.” 

We  have  rather  painful  proof  that  this  “  second  class  of 
influences  ”  with  a  vast  number  go  hardly  deeper  than  fashion, 
and  that  witchcraft  to  many  of  us  is  absurd  only  on  the  same 
ground  that  our  grandfather’s  gigs  are  absurd.  It  is  felt  pre¬ 
posterous  to  think  of  spiritual  agencies  in  connection  with 
ragged  beldames  soaring  on  broomsticks,  in  an  age  when  it 
is  known  that  mediums  of  communication  with  the  invis¬ 
ible  world  are  usually  unctuous  personages  dressed  in  excel¬ 
lent  broadcloth,  who  soar  above  the  curtain-poles  without 
any  broomstick,  and  who  are  not  given  to  unprofitable  in¬ 
trigues.  The  enlightened  imagination  rejects  the  figure  of  a 
witch  with  her  profile  in  dark  relief  against  the  moon,  and 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


143 


her  broomstick  cutting  a  constellation.  No  undiscovered  nat¬ 
ural  laws,  no  names  of  “  respectable  ”  witnesses,  are  invoked  to 
make  us  feel  our  presumption  in  questioning  the  diabolic  inti¬ 
macies  of  that  obsolete  old  woman,  for  it  is  known  now  that  the 
undiscovered  laws,  and  the  witnesses  qualified  by  the  payment 
of  income  tax,  are  all  in  favor  of  a  different  conception,  —  the 
image  of  a  heavy  gentleman  in  boots  and  black  coat-tails  fore¬ 
shortened  against  the  cornice.  Yet  no  less  a  person  than  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  once  wrote  that  those  who  denied  there  were 
witches,  inasmuch  as  they  thereby  denied  spirits  also,  were 
“  obliquely  and  upon  consequence  a  sort,  not  of  infidels,  but 
of  atheists.”  At  present,  doubtless,  in  certain  circles  unbe¬ 
lievers  in  heavy  gentlemen  who  float  in  the  air  by  means  of 
undiscovered  laws  are  also  taxed  with  atheism ;  illiberal  as  it 
is  not  to  admit  that  mere  weakness  of  understanding  may 
prevent  one  from  seeing  how  that  phenomenon  is  necessarily 
involved  in  the  divine  origin  of  things.  With  still  more  re¬ 
markable  parallelism,  Sir  Thomas  Browne  goes  on:  “Those 
that,  to  refute  their  incredulity,  desire  to  see  apparitions, 
shall  questionless  never  behold  any,  nor  have  the  power  to 
be  so  much  as  witches.  The  Devil  hath  made  them  already 
in  a  heresy  as  capital  as  witchcraft,  and  to  appear  to  them  were 
but  to  convert  them.”  It  would  be  difficult  to  see  what  has 
been  changed  here  but  the  mere  drapery  of  circumstance,  if  it 
were  not  for  this  prominent  difference  between  our  days  and 
the  days  of  witchcraft,  that  instead  of  torturing,  drowning,  or 
burning  the  innocent,  we  give  hospitality  and  large  pay  to 
the  highly  distinguished  medium.  At  least  we  are  safely  rid 
of  certain  horrors ;  but  if  the  multitude  —  that  “  farraginous 
concurrence  of  all  conditions,  tempers,  sexes,  and  ages”  —  do 
not  roll  back  even  to  a  superstition  that  carries  cruelty  in  its 
train,  it  is  not  because  they  possess  a  cultivated  reason,  but 
because  they  are  pressed  upon  and  held  up  by  what  we  may 
call  an  external  reason, — the  sum  of  conditions  resulting  from 
the  laws  of  material  growth,  from  changes  produced  by  great 
historical  collisions  shattering  the  structures  of  ages  and  mak¬ 
ing  new  highways  for  events  and  ideas,  and  from  the  activities 


144 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


of  higher  minds  no  longer  existing  merely  as  opinions  and 
teachings,  but  as  institutions  and  organizations  with  which 
the  interests,  the  affections,  and  the  habits  of  the  multitude 
are  inextricably  interwoven.  No  undiscovered  laws  account¬ 
ing  for  small  phenomena  going  forward  under  drawing-room 
tables  are  likely  to  affect  the  tremendous  facts  of  the  increase 
of  population,  the  rejection  of  convicts  by  our  colonies,  the 
exhaustion  of  the  soil  by  cotton  plantations,  which  urge  even 
upon  the  foolish  certain  questions,  certain  claims,  certain 
views  concerning  the  scheme  of  the  world,  that  can  never 
again  be  silenced. 

If  right  reason  is  a  right  representation  of  the  co-existences 
and  sequences  of  things,  here  are  co-existences  and  sequences 
that  do  not  wait  to  be  discovered,  but  press  themselves  upon 
us  like  bars  of  iron.  No  seances  at  a  guinea  a  head  for  the 
sake  of  being  pinched  by  “Mary  Jane”  can  annihilate  rail¬ 
ways,  steamships,  and  electric  telegraphs,  which  are  demon¬ 
strating  the  interdependence  of  all  human  interests,  and 
making  self-interest  a  duct  for  sympathy.  These  things  are 
part  of  the  external  reason  to  which  internal  silliness  has 
inevitably  to  accommodate  itself. 

Three  points  in  the  history  of  magic  and  witchcraft  are 
well  brought  out  by  Mr.  Lecky  :  First,  that  the  cruelties  com 
nected  with  it  did  not  begin  until  men’s  minds  had  ceased  to 
repose  implicitly  in  a  sacramental  system  which  made  them 
feel  well  armed  against  evil  spirits ;  that  is,  until  the  eleventh 
century,  when  there  came  a  sort  of  morning  dream  of  doubt 
and  heresy,  bringing  on  the  one  side  the  terror  of  timid 
consciences,  and  on  the  other  the  terrorism  of  authority  or 
zeal  bent  on  checking  the  rising  struggle.  In  that  time  of 
comparative  mental  repose,  says  Mr.  Lecky,  — 

“  all  those  conceptions  of  diabolical  presence,  all  that  predisposition 
towards  the  miraculous,  which  acted  so  fearfully  upon  the  imaginations 
of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  existed ;  but  the  implicit  faith, 
the  boundless  and  triumphant  credulity,  with  which  the  virtue  of  eccle¬ 
siastical  rites  was  accepted,  rendered  diem  comparatively  innocuous. 
If  men  had  been  a  little  less  superstitious,  the  effects  of  their  supersti* 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


145 


tion  would  have  been  much  more  terrible.  It  was  firmly  believed  that 
any  one  who  deviated  from  the  strict  line  of  orthodoxy  must  soon  suc¬ 
cumb  beneath  the  power  of  Satan ;  but  as  there  was  no  spirit  of  re¬ 
bellion  or  doubt,  this  persuasion  did  not  produce  any  extraordinary 
terrorism.” 

Tlie  Church  was  disposed  to  confound  heretical  opinion 
with  sorcery ;  false  doctrine  was  especially  the  devil’s  work, 
and  it  was  a  ready  conclusion  that  a  denier  or  innovator  had 
held  consultation  with  the  father  of  lies.  It  is  a  saying  of  a 
zealous  Catholic  in  the  sixteenth  century,  quoted  by  Maury  in 
his  excellent  work,  u  De  la  Magie,”  —  “  Crescit  cum  magia 
hceresis,  cum  hceresi  magia .”  Even  those  who  doubted  were 
terrified  at  their  doubts,  for  trust  is  more  easily  undermined 
than  terror;  fear  is  easier  born  than  hope,  lays  a  stronger 
grasp  on  man’s  system  than  any  other  passion,  and  remains 
master  of  a  larger  group  of  involuntary  actions.  A  chief 
aspect  of  man’s  moral  development  is  the  slow  subduing  of 
fear  by  the  gradual  growth  of  intelligence,  and  its  suppression 
as  a  motive  by  the  presence  of  impulses  less  animally  selfish ; 
so  that  in  relation  to  invisible  power  fear  at  last  ceases  to 
exist,  save  in  that  interfusion  with  higher  faculties  which  we 
call  awe. 

Secondly,  Mr.  Lecky  shows  clearly  that  dogmatic  Protes¬ 
tantism,  holding  the  vivid  belief  in  Satanic  agency  to  be  an 
essential  of  piety,  would  have  felt  it  shame  to  be  a  whit 
behind  Catholicism  in  severity  against  the  Devil’s  servants. 
Luther’s  sentiments  were,  that  he  would  not  suffer  a  witch  to 
live  (lie  was  not  much  more  merciful  to  Jews) ;  and,  in  spite 
of  his  fondness  for  children,  believing  a  certain  child  to  have 
been  begotten  by  the  Devil,  he  recommended  the  parents  to 
throw  it  into  the  river.  The  torch  must  be  turned  on  the 
worst  errors  of  heroic  minds,  not  in  irreverent  ingratitude, 
but  for  the  sake  of  measuring  our  vast  and  various  debt  to  all 
the  influences  which  have  concurred  in  the  intervening  ages 
to  make  us  recognize  as  detestable  errors  the  honest  convic¬ 
tions  of  men  who  in  mere  individual  capacity  and  moral 
force  were  very  much  above  us.  Again,  the  Scotch  Puritans, 

10 


VOL.  LX- 


/46 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


during  the  comparatively  short  period  of  their  ascendency, 
surpassed  all  Christians  before  them  in  the  elaborate  ingenu¬ 
ity  of  the  tortures  they  applied  for  the  discovery  of  witch¬ 
craft  and  sorcery,  and  did  their  utmost  to  prove  that  if  Scotch 
Calvinism  was  the  true  religion,  the  chief  “  note  ”  of  the  true 
religion  was  cruelty.  It  is  hardly  an  endurable  task  to  read 
the  story  of  their  doings ;  thoroughly  to  imagine  them  as  a 
past  reality  is  already  a  sort  of  torture.  One  detail  is  enough, 
and  it  is  a  comparatively  mild  one.  It  was  the  regular  pro¬ 
fession  of  men,  called  “  prickers,”  to  thrust  long  pins  into  the 
body  of  a  suspected  witch  in  order  to  detect  the  insensible 
spot  which  was  the  infallible  sign  of  her  guilt.  On  a  super¬ 
ficial  view  one  would  be  in  danger  of  saying  that  the  main 
difference  between  the  teachers  who  sanctioned  these  things, 
and  the  mucli-despised  ancestors  who  offered  human  victims 
inside  a  huge  wicker  idol,  was  that  they  arrived  at  a  more 
elaborate  barbarity  by  a  longer  series  of  dependent  proposi¬ 
tions.  We  do  not  share  Mr.  Buckle’s  opinion  that  a  Scotch 
minister’s  groans  were  a  part  of  his  deliberate  plan  for  keep¬ 
ing  the  people  in  a  state  of  terrified  subjection ;  the  ministers 
themselves  held  the  belief  they  taught,  and  well  might  groan 
over  it.  What  a  blessing  has  a  little  false  logic  been  to  the 
world  !  Seeing  that  men  are  so  slow  to  question  their  prem¬ 
ises,  they  must  have  made  each  other  much  more  miserable, 
if  pity  had  not  sometimes  drawn  tender  conclusions  not  war¬ 
ranted  by  major  and  minor ;  if  there  had  not  been  people  with 
an  amiable  imbecility  of  reasoning  which  enabled  them  at 
once  to  cling  to  hideous  beliefs,  and  to  be  conscientiously  in¬ 
consistent  with  them  in  their  conduct.  There  is  nothing  like 
acute  deductive  reasoning  for  keeping  a  man  in  the  dark ;  it 
might  be  called  the  technique  of  the  intellect,  and  the  concen¬ 
tration  of  the  mind  upon  it  corresponds  to  that  predominance 
of  technical  skill  in  art  which  ends  in  degradation  of  the  art¬ 
ist’s  function,  unless  new  inspiration  and  invention  come  to 
guide  it. 

And  of  this  there  is  some  good  illustration  furnished  by 
that  third  node  in  the  history  of  witchcraft,  the  beginning  of 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


147 


its  end,  which  is  treated  in  an  interesting  manner  by  Mr. 
Lecky.  It  is  worth  noticing  that  the  most  important  de¬ 
fences  of  the  belief  in  witchcraft,  against  the  growing  scepti¬ 
cism  in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  in  the 
seventeenth,  were  the  productions  of  men  who  in  some  de¬ 
partments  were  among  the  foremost  thinkers  of  their  time. 
One  of  them  was  Jean  Bodin,  the  famous  writer  on  govern¬ 
ment  and  jurisprudence,  whose  “  Republic,”  Hallam  thinks, 
had  an  important  influence  in  England,  and  furnished  “a 
store  of  arguments  and  examples  that  were  not  lost  on  the 
thoughtful  minds  of  our  countrymen.”  In  some  of  his  views 
he  was  original  and  bold ;  for  example,  he  anticipated  Mon. 
tesquieu  in  attempting  to  appreciate  the  relations  of  govern¬ 
ment  and  climate.  Hallam  inclines  to  the  opinion  that  he 
was  a  Jew,  and  attached  Divine  authority  only  to  the  Old  Tes¬ 
tament.  But  this  was  enough  to  furnish  him  with  his  chief 
data  for  the  existence  of  witches  and  for  their  capital  punish¬ 
ment  ;  and  in  the  account  of  his  “  Republic,”  given  by  Hallam, 
there  is  enough  evidence '  that  the  sagacity  which  often  en¬ 
abled  him  to  make  fine  use  of  his  learning  was  also  often 
entangled  in  it,  to  temper  our  surprise  at  finding  a  writer  on 
political  science  of  whom  it  could  be  said  that,  along  with 
Montesquieu,  he  was  “the  most  philosophical  of  those  who 
had  read  so  deeply,  the  most  learned  of  those  who  had 
thought  so  much,”  in  the  van  of  the  forlorn  hope  to  main¬ 
tain  the  reality  of  witchcraft.  It  should  be  said  that  he  was 
equally  confident  of  the  unreality  of  the  Copernican  hypothe¬ 
sis,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  contrary  to  the  tenets  of  the 
theologians  and  philosophers  and  to  common-sense,  and  there- 
fore  subversive  of  the  foundations  of  every  science.  Of  his 
work  on  witchcraft,  Mr.  Lecky  says  :  — 

“  The  1  Demonomanie  des  Sorciers  ’  is  chiefly  an  appeal  to  authority, 
which  the  author  deemed  on  this  subject  so  unanimous  and  so  conclu¬ 
sive  that  it  was  scarcely  possible  for  any  sane  man  to  resist  it.  He 
appealed  to  the  popular  belief  in  all  countries,  in  all  ages,  and  in  all 
religions.  He  cited  the  opinions  of  an  immense  multitude  of  the 
greatest  writers  of  pagan  antiquity,  and  of  the  most  illustrious,  of 


148 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


the  fathers.  He  showed  how  the  laws  of  all  nations  recognized  the 
existence  of  witchcraft ;  and  he  collected  hundreds  of  cases  which  had 
been  investigated  before  the  tribunals  of  his  own  or  of  other  countries. 
He  relates  with  the  most  minute  and  circumstantial  detail,  and  with 
the  most  unfaltering  confidence,  all  the  proceedings  at  the  witches’  Sab¬ 
bath,  the  methods  which  the  witches  employed  in  transporting  them¬ 
selves  through  the  air,  their  transformations,  their  carnal  intercourse 
with  the  Devil,  their  various  means  of  injuring  their  enemies,  the  signs 
that  led  to  their  detection,  their  confessions  when  condemned,  and 
their  demeanor  at  the  stake.” 

Something  must  be  allowed  for  a  lawyer’s  affection  towards 
a  belief  which  had  furnished  so  many  “  cases.”  Bodin’s  work 
had  been  prompted  by  the  treatise,  “De  Prestigiis  Daemo- 
num,”  written  by  John  Wier,  a  German  physician, — a  treatise 
which  is  worth  notice  as  an  example  of  a  transitional  form  of 
opinion  for  which  many  analogies  may  be  found  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  both  religion  and  science.  Wier  believed  in  demons, 
and  in  possession  by  demons ;  but  his  practice  as  a  physician 
had  convinced  him  that  the  so-called  witches  were  patients 
and  victims,  that  the  Devil  took  advantage  of  their  diseased 
condition  to  delude  them,  and  that  there  was  no  consent  of  an 
evil  will  on  the  part  of  the  women.  He  argued  that  the  word 
in  Leviticus  translated  “  witch  ”  meant  “  poisoner,”  and  be¬ 
sought  the  princes  of  Europe  to  hinder  the  further  spilling 
of  innocent  blood.  These  heresies  of  Wier  threw  Bodin  into 
such  a  state  of  amazed  indignation  that  if  he  had  been  an 
ancient  Jew,  instead  of  a  modern  economical  one,  he  would 
have  rent  his  garments.  “No  one  had  ever  heard  of  pardon 
being  accorded  to  sorcerers ;  ”  and  probably  the  reason  why 
Charles  IX.  died  young  was  because  he  had  pardoned  the 
sorcerer,  Trois  Echelles !  We  must  remember  that  this  was  in 
1581,  when  the  great  scientific  movement  of  the  Renaissance 
had  hardly  begun,  when  Galileo  was  a  youth  of  seventeen,  and 
Kepler  a  boy  of  ten. 

But  directly  afterwards,  on  the  other  side,  came  Montaigne, 
whose  sceptical  acuteness  could  arrive  at  negatives  without 
any  apparatus  of  method.  A  certain  keen  narrowness  of 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


149 


nature  will  secure  a  man  from  many  absurd  beliefs  which  the 
larger  soul,  vibrating  to  more  manifold  influences,  would  have 
a  long  struggle  to  part  with.  And  so  we  find  the  charming, 
chatty  Montaigne,  in  one  of  the  brightest  of  his  essays,  “  Des 
Boiteux,”  where  he  declares  that,  from  his  own  observation 
of  witches  and  sorcerers,  he  should  have  recommended  them 
to  be  treated  with  curative  hellebore,  stating  in  his  own  way 
a  pregnant  doctrine,  since  taught  more  gravely.  It  seems  to 
him  much  less  of  a  prodigy  that  men  should  lie,  or  that  their 
imaginations  should  deceive  them,  than  that  a  human  body 
should  be  carried  through  the  air  on  a  broomstick  or  up  a 
chimney  by  some  unknown  spirit.  He  thinks  it  a  sad  busi¬ 
ness  to  persuade  one’s  self  that  the  test  of  truth  lies  in  the 
multitude  of  believers  :  “  En  une  presse  ou  les  fols  surpassent 
de  tant  les  sages  en  nombre.”  Ordinarily  he  has  observed, 
when  men  have  something  stated  to  them  as  a  fact,  they  are 
more  ready  to  explain  it  than  to  inquire  whether  it  is  real : 
“  Ils  passent  par-dessus  les  propositions,  mais  ils  examinent 
les  consequences ;  ils  laissent  les  choses,  et  courent  aux  causes .” 
There  is  a  sort  of  strong  and  generous  ignorance  which  is  as 
honorable  and  courageous  as  science :  “  Ignorance  pour  la- 
quelle  concevoir  il  n’y  a  pas  moins  de  science  qu’a  concevoir 
la  science.”  And  apropos  of  the  immense  traditional  evi¬ 
dence  which  weighed  with  such  men  as  Bodin,  he  says :  “  As 
for  the  proofs  and  arguments  founded  on  experience  and  facts, 
I  do  not  pretend  to  unravel  these.  What  end  of  a  thread  is 
there  to  lay  hold  of  ?  I  often  cut  them,  as  Alexander  did  his 
kuot.  Apres  tout,  c’est  mettre  ses  conjectures  a  bien  haut  prix, 
que  d’enfaire  cuire  un  homvie  tout  vij .” 

Writing  like  this,  when  it  finds  eager  readers,  is  a  sign  that 
the  weather  is  changing ;  yet  much  later,  namely,  after  1GG5, 
when  the  Royal  Society  had  been  founded,  our  own  Glanvil, 
the  author  of  the  “  Scepsis  Scientifica,  —  a  work  that  w  as  a 
remarkable  advance  towards  a  true  definition  of  the  limits 
of  inquiry,  and  that  won  him  his  election  as  fellow  of  the 
Society,  —  published  an  energetic  vindication  of  the  belief  in 
witchcraft,  of  which  Mr.  Lecky  gives  the  following  sketch . 


150 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELiO'T. 


“  The  ‘  Sadducismus  Triumpliatus,’  which  is  probably  the  ablest 
book  ever  published  in  defence  of  the  superstition,  opens  with  a  strik¬ 
ing  picture  of  the  rapid  progress  of  the  scepticism  iu  England.  Every¬ 
where  a  disbelief  in  witchcraft  was  becoming  fashionable  in  the  upper 
classes;  but  it  was  a  disbelief  that  arose  entirely  from  a  strong  sense 
of  its  antecedent  improbability.  All  who  were  opposed  to  the  Ortho-  ' 
dox  faith  united  in  discrediting  witchcraft.  They  laughed  at  it,  as 
palpably  absurd,  as  involving  the  most  grotesque  and  ludicrous  con¬ 
ceptions,  as  so  essentially  incredible  that  it  would  be  a  waste  of  time 
to  examine  it.  This  spirit  had  arisen  since  the  restoration,  although 
the  laws  were  still  iu  force,  and  although  little  or  no  direct  reasoning 
had  been  brought  to  bear  upon  the  subject.  In  order  to  combat  it, 
Glanvil  proceeded  to  examine  the  general  question  of  the  credibility  of 
tlie  miraculous.  He  saw  that  the  reason  why  witchcraft  was  ridiculed 
was  because  it  was  a  phase  of  the  miraculous,  and  the  wrork  of  the 
Devil ;  that  the  scepticism  was  chiefly  due  to  those  who  disbelieved  in 
miracles  and  the  Devil ;  and  that  the  instances  of  witchcraft  or  posses¬ 
sion  in  the  Bible  were  invariably  placed  on  a  level  with  those  that  were 
tried  in  the  courts  of  England.  That  the  evidence  of  the  belief  was 
overwhelming,  he  firmly  believed;  and  this,  indeed,  was  scarcely  dis¬ 
puted  ;  but,  until  the  sense  of  a  priori  improbability  was  removed,  no 
possible  accumulation  of  facts  would  cause  men  to  believe  it.  To  that 
task  he  accordingly  addressed  himself.  Anticipating  the  idea  and 
almost  the  words  of  modern  controversialists,  he  urged  that  there  was 
such  a  thing  as  a  credulity  of  unbelief ;  and  that  those  who  believed 
so  strange  a  concurrence  of  delusions  as  was  necessary  on  the  sup¬ 
position  of  the  unreality  of  witchcraft,  were  far  more  credulous  than 
those  who  accepted  the  belief.  He  made  his  very  scepticism  his  prin¬ 
cipal  weapon  ;  and,  analyzing  with  much  acuteness  the  a  priori  objec¬ 
tions,  he  showed  that  they  rested  upon  au  unwarrantable  confidence  in 
our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  spirit  world,  that  they  implied  the 
existence  of  some  strict  analogy  between  the  faculties  of  men  and  of 
spirits,  and  that,  as  such  analogy  most  probably  did  not  exist,  no  rea¬ 
soning  based  on  the  supposition  could  dispense  men  from  examining 
the  evidence.  He  concluded  with  a  large  collection  of  cases,  the 
evidence  of  which  was,  as  he  thought,  incontestable.” 

We  have  quoted  this  sketch  because  Glanvil’s  argument 
against  the  a  priori  objection  of  absurdity  is  fatiguingly 
urged  in  relation  to  other  alleged  marvels  which  to  busy 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


151 


people,  seriously  occupied  with  the  difficulties  of  affairs,  of 
science,  or  of  art,  seem  as  little  worthy  of  examination  as 
aeronautic  broomsticks ;  and  also  because  we  here  see  Glan- 
vil,  in  combating  an  incredulity  that  does  not  happen  to  be 
his  own,  wielding  that  very  argument  of  traditional  evidence 
which  he  had  made  the  subject  of  vigorous  attack  in  his 
“Scepsis  Scientifica.”  But  perhaps  large  minds  have  been 
peculiarly  liable  to  this  fluctuation  concerning  the  sphere  of 
tradition,  because,  while  they  have  attacked  its  misapplica¬ 
tions,  they  have  been  the  more  solicited  by  the  vague  sense 
that  tradition  is  really  the  basis  of  our  best  life.  Our  senti¬ 
ments  may  be  called  organized  traditions ;  and  a  large  part  of 
our  actions  gather  all  their  justification,  all  their  attraction 
and  aroma,  from  the  memory  of  the  life  lived,  of  the  actions 
done,  before  we  were  born.  In  the  absence  of  any  profound 
research  into  psychological  functions  or  into  the  mysteries  of 
inheritance,  in  the  absence  of  any  profound  comprehensive 
view  of  man’s  historical  development  and  the  dependence  of 
one  age  on  another,  a  mind  at  all  rich  in  sensibilities  must 
always  have  had  an  indefinite  uneasiness  in  an  undistinguisffi 
ing  attack  on  the  coercive  influence  of  tradition.  And  this 
may  be  the  apology  for  the  apparent  inconsistency  of  Glan- 
vil’s  acute  criticism  on  the  one  side,  and  his  indignation  at 
the  “  looser  gentry,”  who  laughed  at  the  evidences  for  witch¬ 
craft  on  the  other.  We  have  already  taken  up  too  much  space 
with  this  subject  of  witchcraft,  else  we  should  be  tempted  to 
dwell  on  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  who  far  surpassed  Glanvil  in 
magnificent  incongruity  of  opinion,  and  whose  works  are 
the  most  remarkable  combination  existing,  of  witty  sarcasm 
against  ancient  nonsense  and  modern  obsequiousness,  with 
indications  of  a  capacious  credulity.  After  all,  we  may  be 
sharing  what  seems  to  us  the  hardness  of  these  men,  who  sat 
in  their  studies  and  argued  at  their  ease  about  a  belief  that 
would  be  reckoned  to  have  caused  more  misery  and  bloodshed 
than  any  other  superstition,  if  there  had  been  no  such  thing 
as  persecution  on  the  ground  of  religious  opinion. 

On  this  subject  of  persecution,  Mr.  Lecky  writes  his  best ; 


152 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


with  clearness  of  conception,  with  calm  justice,  bent  on  ap 
predating  the  necessary  tendency  of  ideas,  and  with  an 
appropriateness  of  illustration  that  could  be  supplied  only 
by  extensive  and  intelligent  reading.  Persecution,  he  shows, 
is  not  in  any  sense  peculiar  to  the  Catholic  church ;  it  is  a 
direct  sequence  of  the  doctrines  that  salvation  is  to  be  had 
only  within  the  Church,  and  that  erroneous  belief  is  damna¬ 
tory,  —  doctrines  held  as  fully  by  Protestant  sects  as  by  the 
Catholics ;  and  in  proportion  to  its  power,  Protestantism  has 
been  as  persecuting  as  Catholicism.  He  maintains,  in  opposi¬ 
tion  to  the  favorite  modern  notion  of  persecution  defeating 
its  own  object,  that  the  Church,  holding  the  dogma  of  exclu¬ 
sive  salvation,  was  perfectly  consequent,  and  really  achieved 
its  end  of  spreading  one  belief  and  quenching  another,  by 
calling  in  the  aid  of  the  civil  arm.  Who  will  say  that  gov¬ 
ernments,  by  their  power  over  institutions  and  patronage,  as 
well  as  over  punishment,  have  not  power  over  the  interests 
and  inclinations  of  men,  and  over  most  of  those  external  con¬ 
ditions  into  which  subjects  are  born,  and  which  make  them 
adopt  the  prevalent  belief  as  a  second  nature  ?  Hence,  to  a 
sincere  believer  in  the  doctrine  of  exclusive  salvation,  gov¬ 
ernments  had  it  in  their  power  to  save  men  from  perdition ; 
and  wherever  the  clergy  were  at  the  elbow  of  the  civil  arm, 
no  matter  whether  they  were  Catholic  or  Protestant,  persecu¬ 
tion  was  the  result.  “Compel  them  to  come  in,”  was  a  rule 
that  seemed  sanctioned  by  mercy ;  and  the  horrible  sufferings 
it  led  men  to  inflict  seemed  small  to  minds  accustomed  to 
contemplate,  as  a  perpetual  source  of  motive,  the  eternal,  un¬ 
mitigated  miseries  of  a  hell  that  was  the  inevitable  destination 
of  a  majority  amongst  mankind. 

It  is  a  significant  fact,  noted  by  Mr.  Lecky,  that  the  only 
two  leaders  of  the  Reformation  who  advocated  tolerance  were 
Zuinglius  and  Socinus,  both  of  them  disbelievers  in  exclusive 
salvation.  And  in  corroboration  of  other  evidence  that  the 
chief  triumphs  of  the  Reformation  were  due  to  coercion,  lie 
commends  to  the  special  attention  of  his  readers  the  follow¬ 
ing  quotation  from  a  work  attributed  without  question  to  the 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


153 


famous  Protestant  theologian,  Jurieu,  who  had  himself  been 
hindered,  as  a  Protestant,  from  exercising  his  professional 
functions  in  France,  and  was  settled  as  pastor  at  Rotterdam. 
It  should  be  remembered  that  Jurieu’s  labors  fell  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  in  the  beginning  of  the. 
eighteenth,  and  that  he  was  the  contemporary  of  Bayle,  with 
whom  he  was  in  bitter  controversial  hostility.  He  wrote, 
then,  at  a  time  when  there  was  warm  debate  on  the  question 
of  toleration ;  and  it  was  his  great  object  to  vindicate  him¬ 
self  and  his  French  fellow-Protestants  from  all  laxity  on  this 
point :  — 

u  Peut  on  nier  que  le  paganisme  est  tombe  dans  le  monde  par  Pauto- 
rite  des  empereurs  romains?  On  peut  assurer  sans  temerite  que  le 
paganisme  seroit  encore  debout,  et  que  les  trois  quarts  de  PEurope 
seroient  encore  payens  si  Constantin  et  ses  successeurs  n’avaient  em¬ 
ploye  leur  autorite  pour  l’abolir.  Mais,  je  vous  prie,  de  quelles  voies 
Dieu  s’est  il  servi  dans  ces  derniers  .siecles  pour  retablir  la  veritable 
religion  dans  Poccident  ?  Les  rois  de  Suede ,  ceux  de  Danemarclc,  ceux 
d' Angleterre,  les  magistrals  souverains  de  Suisse ,  des  Pais  Bas,  des 
titles  libres  d' Allemagne,  les  princes  dlecteurs,  et  autres  princes  souve¬ 
rains  de  Vempire,  riont  ils  pas  emploie  leur  autorite  pour  abbattre  le 
papisme  ?  ” 

Indeed,  wherever  the  tremendous  alternative  of  everlasting 
torments  is  believed  in,  —  believed  in  so  that  it  becomes  a 
motive  determining  the  life,  —  not  only  persecution,  but  every 
other  form  of  severity  and  gloom,  is  the  legitimate  conse¬ 
quence.  There  is  much  ready  declamation  in  these  days 
against  the  spirit  of  asceticism  and  against  zeal  for  doctrinal 
conversion ;  but  surely  the  macerated  form  of  a  St.  Francis, 
the  fierce  denunciations  of  a  St.  Dominic,  the  groans  and 
prayerful  wrestlings  of  the  Puritan  who  seasoned  his  bread 
with  tears,  and  made  all  pleasurable  sensation  sin,  are  more 
in  keeping  with  the  contemplation  of  unmending  anguish  as 
the  destiny  of  a  vast  multitude  whose  nature  we  share,  than 
the  rubicund  cheerfulness  of  some  modern  divines,  who  pro¬ 
fess  to  unite  a  smiling  liberalism  with  a  well-bred  and  tacit 
but  unshaken  confidence  in  the  reality  of  the  bottomless  pit. 


154 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


But,  in  fact,  as  Mr.  Lecky  maintains,  that  awful  image,  with 
its  group  of  associated  dogmas  concerning  the  inherited  ourse, 
and  the  damnation  of  unbaptized  infants,  of  heathens,  and  of 
heretics,  has  passed  away  from  what  he  is  fond  of  calling 
“  the  realizations  ”  of  Christendom.  These  things  are  no 
longer  the  objects  of  practical  belief.  They  may  be  mourned 
for  in  encyclical  letters ;  bishops  may  regret  them ;  doctors 
of  divinity  may  sign  testimonials  to  the  excellent  character 
of  these  decayed  beliefs ;  but  for  the  mass  of  Christians  they 
are  no  more  influential  than  unrepealed  but  forgotten  statutes. 
And  with  these  dogmas  has  melted  away  the  strong  basis  for 
the  defence  of  persecution.  iNo  man  now  writes  eager  vindi¬ 
cations  of  himself  and  his  colleagues  from  the  suspicion  of 
adhering  to  the  principle  of  toleration.  And  this  momentous 
change,  it  is  Mr.  Lecky ’s  object  to  show,  is  due  to  that  con¬ 
currence  of  conditions  which  he  has  chosen  to  call  “the 
advance  of  the  spirit  of  rationalism.” 

In  other  parts  of  his  work,  where  he  attempts  to  trace  the 
action  of  the  same  conditions  on  the  acceptance  of  miracles 
and  on  other  chief  phases  of  our  historical  development,  Mr. 
Lecky  has  laid  himself  open  to  considerable  criticism.  The 
chapters  on  the  miracles  of  the  Church,  the  aesthetic,  scien 
tific,  and  moral  development  of  rationalism,  the  seculariza¬ 
tion  of  politics,  and  the  industrial  history  of  rationalism, 
embrace  a  wide  range  of  diligently  gathered  facts  ;  hut  they 
are  nowhere  illuminated  by  a  sufficiently  clear  conception 
and  statement  of  the  agencies  at  work,  or  the  mode  of  their 
action,  in  the  gradual  modification  of  opinion  and  of  life. 
The  writer  frequently  impresses  us  as  being  in  a  state  of 
hesitation  concerning  his  own  standing-point,  which  may 
form  a  desirable  stage  in  private  meditation  but  not  in  pub¬ 
lished  exposition.  Certain  epochs  in  theoretic  conception, 
certain  considerations,  which  should  be  fundamental  to  his 
survey,  are  introduced  quite  incidentally  in  a  sentence  or 
two,  or  in  a  note  which  seems  to  be  an  afterthought.  Great 
writers  and  their  ideas  are  touched  upon  too  slightly  and 
with  too  little  discrimination,  and  important  theories  are 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RATIONALISM. 


155 


sometimes  characterized  with  a  rashness  which  conscientious 
revision  will  correct.  There  is  a  fatiguing  use  of  vague  or 
shifting  phrases,  such  as  “Modern  Civilization,”  “Spirit  of 
the  Age,”  “Tone  of  Thought,”  “Intellectual  Type  of  the  Age,” 
“  Bias  of  the  Imagination,”  “  Habits  of  Religious  Thought,” 
unbalanced  by  any  precise  definition ;  and  the  spirit  of  ration¬ 
alism  is  sometimes  treated  of  as  if  it  lay  outside  the  specific 
mental  activities  of  which  it  is  a  generalized  expression. 
Mr.  Curdle’s  famous  definition  of  the  dramatic  unities  as 
“a  sort  of  a  general  oneness,”  is  not  totally  false;  but  such 
luminousness  as  it  has  could  only  be  perceived  by  those  who 
already  knew  what  the  unities  were.  Mr.  Lecky  has  the 
advantage  of  being  strongly  impressed  with  the  great  part 
played  by  the  emotions  in  the  formation  of  opinion,  and  with 
the  high  complexity  of  the  causes  at  work  in  social  evolution ; 
but  he  frequently  writes  as  if  he  had  never  yet  distinguished 
between  the  complexity  of  the  conditions  that  produce  preva¬ 
lent  states  of  mind,  and  the  inability  of  particular  minds  to 
give  distinct  reasons  for  the  preferences  or  persuasions  pro¬ 
duced  by  those  states.  In  brief,  he  does  not  discriminate,  or 
does  not  help  his  reader  to  discriminate,  between  objective 
complexity  and  subjective  confusion.  But  the  most  muddle- 
headed  gentleman  who  represents  the  spirit  of  the  age  by 
observing,  as  he  settles  his  collar,  that  the  development 
theory  is  quite  “  the  thing,”  is  a  result  of  definite  processes, 
if  we  could  only  trace  them.  “Mental  attitudes  ”  and  “pre¬ 
dispositions,”  however  vague  in  consciousness,  have  not  vague 
causes,  any  more  than  the  “blind  motions  of  the  spring”  in 
plants  and  animals. 

The  word  “rationalism”  has  the  misfortune,  shared  by 
most  words  in  this  gray  world,  of  being  somewhat  equivocal. 
This  evil  may  be  nearly  overcome  by  careful  preliminary 
definition  ;  but  Mr.  Lecky  does  not  supply  this,  and  the  origi¬ 
nal  specific  application  of  the  word  to  a  particular  phase  of 
Biblical  interpretation  seems  to  have  clung  about  his  use  of  it 
with  a  misleading  effect.  Through  some  parts  of  his  book  he 
appears  to  regard  the  grand  characteristics  of  modern  thought 


156 


ESSAYS  OF  GEOfLGE  ELIOT. 


and  civilization,  compared  with  ancient,  as  a  radiation  in  the 
first  instance  from  a  change  in  religious  conceptions.  The 
supremely  important  fact  that  the  gradual  reduction  of  all 
phenomena  within  the  sphere  of  established  law,  which  car¬ 
ries  as  a  consequence  the  rejection  of  the  miraculous,  has  its 
determining  current  in  the  development  of  physical  science, 
seems  to  have  engaged  comparatively  little  of  his  attention ; 
at  least,  he  gives  it  no  prominence.  The  great  conception  of 
universal  regular  sequence,  without  partiality  and  without 
caprice,  —  the  conception  which  is  the  most  potent  force  at 
work  in  the  modification  of  our  faith,  and  of  the  practical 
form  given  to  our  sentiments,  —  could  only  grow  out  of  that 
patient  watching  of  external  fact  and  that  silencing  of  pre¬ 
conceived  notions  which  are  urged  upon  the  mind  by  the 
problems  of  physical  science. 

There  is  not  room  here  to  explain  and  justify  the  impres¬ 
sions  of  dissatisfaction  which  have  been  briefly  indicated ;  but 
a  serious  writer,  like  Mr.  Lecky,  will  not  find  such  sugges¬ 
tions  altogether  useless.  The  objections,  even  the  misunder¬ 
standings,  of  a  reader  who  is  not  careless  or  ill-disposed,  may 
serve  to  stimulate  an  author’s  vigilance  over  his  thoughts  as 
well  as  his  style.  It  would  be  gratifying  to  see  some  future 
proof  that  Mr.  Lecky  has  acquired  juster  views  than  are  im¬ 
plied  in  the  assertion  that  philosophers  of  the  sensational 
school  “  can  never  rise  to  the  conception  of  the  disinter¬ 
ested  ;  ”  and  that  he  has  freed  himself  from  all  temptation 
to  that  mingled  laxity  of  statement  and  ill-pitched  elevation 
of  tone  which  are  painfully  present  in  the  closing  pages  of 
his  second  volume. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE. 


T  is  an  interesting  branch  of  psychological  observation  ta 


-L  note  the  images  that  are  habitually  associated  with  ab¬ 
stract  or  collective  terms,  —  what  may  be  called  the  picture¬ 
writing  of  the  mind,  which  it  carries  on  concurrently  with 
the  more  subtle  symbolism  of  language.  Perhaps  the  fixity 
or  variety  of  these  associated  images  would  furnish  a  tolera 
bly  fair  test  of  the  amount  of  concrete  knowledge  and  expe¬ 
rience  which  a  given  word  represents  in  the  minds  of  two 
persons  who  use  it  with  equal  familiarity.  The  word  rail¬ 
ways ,  for  example,  will  probably  call  up,  in  the  mind  of  a 
man  who  is  not  highly  locomotive,  the  image  either  of  a 
Bradshaw,  or  of  the  station  with  which  he  is  most  famil¬ 
iar,  or  of  an  indefinite  length  of  tram-road ;  he  will  alternate 
between  these  three  images,  which  represent  his  stock  of  con¬ 
crete  acquaintance  with  railways.  But  suppose  a  man  to 
have  had  successively  the  experience  of  a  navvy,  an  engi- 
neer,  a  traveller,  a  railway  director  and  shareholder,  and  a 
landed  proprietor  in  treaty  with  a  railway  company,  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  range  of  images  which  would  by  turns  pre¬ 
sent  themselves  to  his  mind  at  the  mention  of  the  word  rail¬ 
ways,  would  include  all  the  essential  facts  in  the  existence 
and  relations  of  the  thing.  Now  it  is  possible  for  the  first- 
mentioned  personage  to  entertain  very  expanded  views  as  to 
the  multiplication  of  railways  in  the  abstract,  and  their  ulti- 
mate  function  in  civilization.  He  may  talk  of  a  vast  net¬ 
work  of  railways  stretching  over  the  globe,  of  future  lines 
in  Madagascar,  and  elegant  refreshment-rooms  in  the  Sand¬ 
wich  Islands,  with  none  the  less  glibness  because  his  distinct 


158 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


conceptions  on  the  subject  do  not  extend  beyond  his  one  sta 
tion  and  his  indefinite  length  of  tram-road.  But  it  is  evi¬ 
dent  that  if  we  want  a  railway  to  be  made,  or  its  affairs  to 
be  managed,  this  man  of  wide  views  and  narrow  observation 
will  not  serve  our  purpose. 

Probably,  if  we  could  ascertain  the  images  called  up  by  the 
terms  “the  people,”  “the  masses,”  “the  proletariat,”  “the 
peasantry,”  by  many  who  theorize  on  those  bodies  with  elo¬ 
quence,  or  who  legislate  without  eloquence,  we  should  find 
that  they  indicate  almost  as  small  an  amount  of  concrete 
knowledge,  that  they  are  as  far  from  completely  representing 
the  complex  facts  summed  up  in  the  collective  term,  as  the 
railway  images  of  our  non-locomotive  gentleman.  How  little 
the  real  characteristics  of  the  working-classes  are  known  to 
those  who  are  outside  them,  how  little  their  natural  history 
has  been  studied,  is  sufficiently  disclosed  by  our  art  as  well  as 
by  our  political  and  social  theories.  Where,  in  our  picture- 
exhibitions,  shall  we  find  a  group  of  true  peasantry  ?  What 
English  artist  even  attempts  to  rival  in  truthfulness  such 
studies  of  popular  life  as  the  pictures  of  Teniers  or  the  ragged 
boys  of  Murillo  ?  Even  one  of  the  greatest  painters  of  the 
pre-eminently  realistic  school,  while,  in  his  picture  of  “  The 
Hireling  Shepherd,”  he  gave  us  a  landscape  of  marvellous 
truthfulness,  placed  a  pair  of  peasants  in  the  foreground 
who  were  not  much  more  real  than  the  idyllic  swains  and 
damsels  of  our  chimney-ornaments.  Only  a  total  absence 
of  acquaintance  and  sympathy  with  our  peasantry  eauld 
give  a  moment’s  popularity  to  such  a  picture  as  “  Cross- 
Purposes,”  where  we  have  a  peasant-girl  who  looks  as  if  she 
knew  L.  E.  L.’s  poems  by  heart,  and  English  rustics,  whose 
costume  seems  to  indicate  that  they  are  meant  for  plough¬ 
men,  with  exotic  features  that  remind  us  of  a  handsome 
'priino  tenore.  Bather  than  such  cockney  sentimentality  as 
this,  as  an  education  for  the  taste  and  sympathies,  we  prefer 
the  most  crapulous  group  of  boors  that  Teniers  ever  painted. 
But  even  those  among  our  painters,  who  aim  at  giving  the 
rustic  type  of  features,  who  are  far  above  the  effeminate 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  159 


feebleness  of  the  “  Keepsake  ”  style,  treat  their  subjects  under 
the  influence  of  traditions  and  prepossessions  rather  than  of 
direct  observation.  The  notion  that  peasants  are  joyous,  that 
the  typical  moment  to  represent  a  man  in  a  smock-frock  is 
when  he  is  cracking  a  joke  and  showing  a  row  of  sound  teeth, 
that  cottage  matrons  are  usually  buxom  and  village  children 
necessarily  rosy  and  merry,  are  prejudices  difficult  to  dis¬ 
lodge  from  the  artistic  mind,  which  looks  for  its  subjects  into 
literature  instead  of  life.  The  painter  is  still  under  the  in¬ 
fluence  of  idyllic  literature,  which  has  always  expressed  the 
imagination  of  the  cultivated  and  town-bred,  rather  than  the 
truth  of  rustic  life.  Idyllic  ploughmen  are  jocund  when  they 
chive  their  team  afield ;  idyllic  shepherds  make  bashful  love 
under  hawthorn  bushes ;  idyllic  villagers  dance  in  the  check¬ 
ered  shade,  and  refresh  themselves,  not  immoderately,  with 
spicy  nut-brown  ale.  But  no  one  who  has  seen  much  of  actual 
ploughmen  thinks  them  jocund;  no  one  who  is  well  acquainted 
with  the  English  peasantry  can  pronounce  them  merry.  The 
slow  gaze,  in  which  no  sense  of  beauty  beams,  no  humor  twin¬ 
kles,  the  slow  utterance,  and  the  heavy  slouching  walk,  re¬ 
mind  one  rather  of  that  melancholy  animal  the  camel,  than  of 
the  sturdy  countryman,  with  striped  stockings,  red  waistcoat, 
and  hat  aside,  who  represents  the  traditional  English  peas¬ 
ant.  Observe  a  company  of  haymakers.  When  you  see  them 
at  a  distance,  tossing  up  the  forkfuls  of  hay  in  the  golden 
light,  while  the  wagon  creeps  slowly  with  its  increasing  bur¬ 
den  over  the  meadow,  and  the  bright-green  space,  which  tells 
of  work  done,  gets  larger  and  larger,  you  pronounce  the  scene 
“smiling/7  and  you  think  these  companions  in  labor  must 
be  as  bright  and  cheerful  as  the  picture  to  which  they  give 
animation.  Approach  nearer,  and  you  will  certainly  find  that 
haymaking  time  is  a  time  for  joking,  especially  if  there  are 
women  among  the  laborers ;  but  the  coarse  laugh  that  bursts 
out  every  now  and  then,  and  expresses  the  triumphant  taunt, 
is  as  far  as  possible  from  your  conception  of  idyllic  merri¬ 
ment.  That  delicious  effervescence  of  the  mind  which  we  call 
fun,  has  no  equivalent  for  the  northern  peasant,  except  tipsy 


160 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


revelry;  the  only  realm  of  fancy  and  imagination  for  me 
English  clown  exists  at  the  bottom  of  the  third  quart-pot. 

The  conventional  countryman  of  the  stage,  who  picks  up 
pocket-books  and  never  looks  into  them,  and  who  is  too  sim¬ 
ple  even  to  know  that  honesty  has  its  opposite,  represents 
the  still  lingering  mistake,  that  an  unintelligible  dialect  is  a 
guarantee  for  ingenuousness,  and  that  slouching  shoulders 
indicate  an  upright  disposition.  It  is  quite  true  that  a 
thresher  is  likely  to  be  innocent  of  any  adroit  arithmetical 
cheating,  but  he  is  not  the  less  likely  to  carry  home  his  mas¬ 
ter’s  corn  in  his  shoes  and  pocket ;  a  reaper  is  not  given  to 
writing  begging-letters,  but  he  is  quite  capable  of  cajoling 
the  dairymaid  into  filling  his  small-beer  bottle  with  ale. 
The  selfish  instincts  are  not  subdued  by  the  sight  of  butter¬ 
cups,  nor  is  integrity  in  the  least  established  by  that  classic 
rural  occupation,  sheep-washing.  To  make  men  moral,  some¬ 
thing  more  is  requisite  than  to  turn  them  out  to  grass. 

Opera  peasants,  whose  unreality  excites  Mr.  Ruskin’s  in¬ 
dignation,  are  surely  too  frank  an  idealization  to  be  mislead¬ 
ing  ;  and  since  popular  chorus  is  one  of  the  most  effective 
elements  of  the  opera,  we  can  hardly  object  to  lyric  rustics 
in  elegant  lace  bodices  and  picturesque  motley,  unless  we  are 
prepared  to  advocate  a  chorus  of  colliers  in  their  pit  costume, 
or  a  ballet  of  char-women  and  stocking-weavers.  But  our 
social  novels  profess  to  represent  the  people  as  they  are,  and 
the  unreality  of  their  representations  is  a  grave  evil.  The 
greatest  benefit  we  owe  to  the  artist,  whether  painter,  poet, 
or  novelist,  is  the  extension  of  our  sympathies.  Appeals 
founded  on  generalizations  and  statistics  require  a  sympathy 
ready-made,  a  moral  sentiment  already  in  activity;  but  a 
picture  of  human  life  such  as  a  great  artist  can  give,  sur¬ 
prises  even  the  trivial  and  the  selfish  into  that  attention  to 
what  is  apart  from  themselves,  which  may  be  called  the  raw 
material  of  moral  sentiment.  When  Scott  takes  us  into 
Luckie  Mucklehackit’s  cottage,  or  tells  the  story  of  “  The 
Two  Drovers  ;”  when  Wordsworth  sings  to  us  the  reverie  of 
“  Poor  Susan ;  ”  when  Kingsley  shows  us  Alton  Locke  gazing 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  161 


yearningly  over  the  gate  which  leads  from  the  highway  into 
the  first  wood  he  ever  saw ;  when  Hornung  paints  a  group  of 
chimney-sweepers, — more  is  done  towards  linking  the  higher 
classes  with  the  lower,  towards  obliterating  the  vulgarity  of 
exclusiveness,  than  by  hundreds  of  sermons  and  philosophi¬ 
cal  dissertations.  Art  is  the  nearest  thing  to  life ;  it  is  a 
mode  of  amplifying  experience  and  extending  our  contact 
with  our  fellow-men  beyond  the  bounds  of  our  personal  lot. 
All  the  more  sacred  is  the  task  of  the  artist  when  he  under¬ 
takes  to  paint  the  life  of  the  people.  Falsification  here  is 
far  more  pernicious  than  in  the  more  artificial  aspects  of  life. 
It  is  not  so  very  serious  that  we  should  have  false  ideas 
about  evanescent  fashions,  about  the  manners  and  conver¬ 
sation  of  beaux  and  duchesses ;  but  it  is  serious  that  our 
sympathy  with  the  perennial  joys  and  struggles,  the  toil,  the 
tragedy,  and  the  humor  in  the  life  of  our  more  heavily-laden 
fellow-men,  should  be  perverted,  and  turned  towards  a  false 
object  instead  of  the  true  one. 

This  perversion  is  not  the  less  fatal  because  the  misrepre¬ 
sentation  which  gives  rise  to  it  has  what  the  artist  considers 
a  moral  end.  The  thing  for  mankind  to  know  is,  not  what 
are  the  motives  and  influences  which  the  moralist  thinks 
ought  to  act  on  the  laborer  or  the  artisan,  but  what  are  the 
motives  and  influences  which  do  act  on  him.  We  want  to  be 
taught  to  feel,  not  for  the  heroic  artisan  or  the  sentimental 
peasant,  but  for  the  peasant  in  all  his  coarse  apathy,  and  the 
artisan  in  all  his  suspicious  selfishness. 

We  have  one  great  novelist  who  is  gifted  with  the  utmost 
power  of  rendering  the  external  traits  of  our  town  popula¬ 
tion  ;  and  if  he  could  give  us  their  psychological  character  — 
their  conception  of  life,  and  their  emotions  —  with  the  same 
truth  as  their  idiom  and  manners,  his  books  would  be  the 
greatest  contribution  Art  has  ever  made  to  the  awakening  of 
social  sympathies.  But  while  he  can  copy  Mrs.  Plornisli’s 
colloquial  style  with  the  delicate  accuracy  of  a  sun-picture, 
while  there  is  the  same  startling  aspiration  in  his  de¬ 
scription  of  the  gestures  and  phrases  of  Boots,  as  in  the 

TO L.  IX.  11 


162 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


speeches  of  Shakspeare’s  mobs  or  numskulls,  he  scarcely 
ever  passes  from  the  humorous  and  external  to  the  emotional 
and  tragic,  without  becoming  as  transcendent  in  his  unreality 
as  he  was  a  moment  before  in  his  artistic  truthfulness.  But 
for  the  precious  salt  of  his  humor,  which  compels  him  to  re¬ 
produce  external  traits  that  serve  in  some  degree  as  a  cor¬ 
rective  to  his  frequently  false  psychology,  his  preternaturally 
virtuous  poor  children  and  artisans,  his  melodramatic  boatmen 
and  courtesans,  would  be  as  obnoxious  as  Eugene  Sue’s  ideal¬ 
ized  proletaires,  in  encouraging  the  miserable  fallacy,  that 
high  morality  and  refined  sentiment  can  grow  out  of-  harsh 
social  relations,  ignorance,  and  want ;  or  that  the  working- 
classes  are  in  a  condition  to  enter  at  once  into  a  millennial 
state  of  altruism,  wherein  every  one  is  caring  for  every  one 
else,  and  no  one  for  himself. 

If  we  need  a  true  conception  of  the  popular  character  to 
guide  our  sympathies  rightly,  we  need  it  equally  to  check 
our  theories,  and  direct  us  in  their  application.  The  ten¬ 
dency  created  by  the  splendid  conquests  of  modern  general¬ 
ization,  to  believe  that  all  social  questions  are  merged  in 
economical  science,  and  that  the  relations  of  men  to  their 
neighbors  may  be  settled  by  algebraic  equations ;  the  dream 
that  the  uncultured  classes  are  prepared  for  a  condition 
which  appeals  principally  to  their  moral  sensibilities;  the 
aristocratic  dilettanteism  which  attempts  to  restore  the  “  good 
old  times  ”  by  a  sort  of  idyllic  masquerading,  and  to  grow 
feudal  fidelity  and  veneration  as  we  grow  prize  turnips,  by 
an  artificial  system  of  culture,  —  none  of  these  diverging 
mistakes  can  co-exist  with  a  real  knowledge  of  the  people, 
with  a  thorough  study  of  their  habits,  their  ideas,  their  mo¬ 
tives.  The  landholder,  the  clergyman,  the  mill-owner,  the 
mining-agent,  have  each  an  opportunity  for  making  precious 
observations  on  different  sections  of  the  working-classes,  but 
unfortunately  their  experience  is  too  often  not  registered  at 
all,  or  its  results  are  too  scattered  to  be  available  as  a  source 
of  information  and  stimulus  to  the  public  mind  generally. 
If  auy  man  of  sufficient  moral  and  intellectual  breadth, 


TIIE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  163 


whose  observations  would  not  be  vitiated  by  a  foregone  con¬ 
clusion  or  by  a  professional  point  of  view,  would  devote 
himself  to  studying  the  natural  history  of  our  social  classes, 
especially  of  the  small  shopkeepers,  artisans,  and  peasantry,  — 
the  degree  in  which  they  are  influenced  by  local  conditions, 
their  maxims  and  habits,  the  points  of  view  from  which  they 
regard  their  religious  teachers,  and  the  degree  in  which  they 
are  influenced  by  religious  doctrines,  the  interaction  of  the 
various  classes  on  each  other,  and  what  are  the  tendencies  in 
their  position  towards  disintegration  or  towards  development, 
—  and  if,  after  all  this  study,  he  would  give  us  the  result  of 
his  observations  in  a  book  well  nourished  with  specific  facts, 
his  work  would  be  a  valuable  aid  to  the  social  and  political 
reformer. 

What  we  are  desiring  for  ourselves  has  been  in  some  de¬ 
gree  done  for  the  Germans  by  Riehl ;  and  we  wish  to  make 
his  books  known  to  our  readers,  not  only  for  the  sake  of 
the  interesting  matter  they  contain,  and  the  important  reflec¬ 
tions  they  suggest,  but  also  as  a  model  for  some  future  or 
actual  student  of  our  own  people.  By  way  of  introducing 
Riehl  to  those  who  are  unacquainted  with  his  writings,  we 
will  give  a  rapid  sketch  from  his  picture  of  the  German  peas¬ 
antry  ;  and  perhaps  this  indication  of  the  mode  in  which  he 
treats  a  particular  branch  of  his  subject,  may  prepare  them  to 
follow  us  with  more  interest  when  we  enter  on  the  general 
purpose  and  contents  of  his  works. 

In  England,  at  present,  when  we  speak  of  the  peasantry, 
we  mean  scarcely  more  than  the  class  of  farm-servants  and 
farm-laborers ;  and  it  is  only  in  the  most  primitive  districts, 
as  in  Wales,  for  example,  that  farmers  are  included  under 
the  term.  In  order  to  appreciate  what  Riehl  says  of  the 
German  peasantry,  we  must  remember  what  the  tenant- 
farmers  and  small  proprietors  were  in  England  half  a  cen¬ 
tury  ago,  when  the  master  helped  to  milk  his  own  cows, 
and  the  daughters  got  up  at  one  o’clock  in  the  morning  to 
brew,  —  when  the  family  dined  in  the  kitchen  with  the  ser¬ 
vants,  and  sat  with  them  round  the  kitchen-lire  in  the  even- 


164 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


ing.  In  those  days  the  quarried  parlor  was  innocent  of  a 
carpet,  and  its  only  specimens  of  art  were  a  framed  sampler 
and  the  best  tea-board;  the  daughters,  even  of  substantial 
farmers,  had  often  no  greater  accomplishment  in  writing  and 
spelling  than  they  could  procure  at  a  dame-school ;  and,  in¬ 
stead  of  carrying  on  sentimental  correspondence,  they  were 
spinning  their  future  table-linen,  and  looking  after  every 
saving  in  butter  and  eggs  that  might  enable  them  to  add  to 
the  little  stock  of  plate  and  china  which  they  were  laying  in 
against  their  marriage.  In  our  own  day,  setting  aside  the 
superior  order  of  farmers,  whose  style  of  living  and  mental 
culture  are  often  equal  to  that  of  the  professional  class  in 
provincial  towns,  we  can  hardly  enter  the  least  imposing 
farmhouse  without  finding  a  bad  piano  in  the  “  drawing¬ 
room,”  and  some  old  annuals,  disposed  with  a  symmetrical 
imitation  of  negligence,  on  the  table ;  though  the  daughters 
may  still  drop  their  h’s,  their  vowels  are  studiously  narrow ; 
and  it  is  only  in  very  primitive  regions  that  they  will  con¬ 
sent  to  sit  in  a  covered  vehicle  without  springs,  which  was 
once  thought  an  advance  in  luxury  on  the  pillion. 

The  condition  of  the  tenant-farmers  and  small  proprietors 
in  Germany  is,  we  imagine,  about  on  a  par,  not,  certainly, 
in  material  prosperity,  but  in  mental  culture  and  habits, 
with  that  of  the  English  farmers  who  were  beginning  to  be 
thought  old-fashioned  nearly  fifty  years  ago ;  and  if  we  add 
to  these  the  farm  servants  and  laborers,  we  shall  have  a  class 
approximating  in  its  characteristics  to  the  Bauerntlium,  or 
peasantry,  described  by  Riehl. 

In  Germany,  perhaps  more  than  in  any  other  country,  it  is 
among  the  peasantry  that  we  must  look  for  the  historical 
type  of  the  national  physique.  In  the  towns  this  type  has 
become  so  modified  to  express  the  personality  of  the  individ¬ 
ual,  that  even  family  likeness  is  often  but  faintly  marked. 
But  the  peasants  may  still  be  distinguished  into  groups,  by 
their  physical  peculiarities.  In  one  part  of  the  country  we 
find  a  longer-legged,  in  another  a  broader-shouldered  race, 
which  has  inherited  these  peculiarities  for  centuries.  Foi 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  165 


example,  in  certain  districts  of  Hesse  are  seen  long  faces, 
with,  high  foreheads,  long,  straight  noses,  and  small  eyes, 
with  arched  eyebrows  and  large  eyelids.  On  comparing  these 
physiognomies  with  the  sculptures  in  the  church  of  St.  Eliza¬ 
beth,  at  Marburg,  executed  in  the  thirteenth  century,  it  will 
be  found  that  the  same  old  Hessian  type  of  face  has  sub¬ 
sisted  unchanged ;  with  this  distinction  only,  that  the  sculp¬ 
tures  represent  princes  and  nobles,  whose  features  then  bore 
the  stamp  of  their  race,  while  that  stamp  is  now  to  be  found 
only  among  the  peasants.  A  painter  who  wants  to  draw 
mediaeval  characters  with  historic  truth,  must  seek  his  models 
among  the  peasantry.  This  explains  why  the  old  German 
painters  gave  the  heads  of  their  subjects  a  greater  uniformity 
of  type  than  the  painters  of  our  day ;  the  race  had  not  at¬ 
tained  to  a  high  degree  of  individualization  in  features  and 
expression.  It  indicates,  too,  that  the  cultured  man  acts 
more  as  an  individual,  the  peasant  more  as  one  of  a  group. 
Hans  drives  the  plough,  lives,  and  thinks  just  as  Kunz  does ; 
and  it  is  this  fact,  that  many  thousands  of  men  are  as  like 
each  other  in  thoughts  and  habits  as  so  many  sheep  or 
oysters,  which  constitutes  the  weight  of  the  peasantry  in  the 
social  and  political  scale. 

In  the  cultivated  world  each  individual  has  his  style  of 
speaking  and  writing  ;  but  among  the  peasantry  it  is  the  race, 
the  district,  the  province,  that  has  its  style,  —  namely,  its  dia¬ 
lect,  its  phraseology,  its  proverbs,  and  its  songs,  which  belong 
alike  to  the  entire  body  of  the  people.  This  provincial  style 
of  the  peasant  is  again,  like  his  physique,  a  remnant  of  his¬ 
tory,  to  which  he  clings  with  the  utmost  tenacity.  In  certain 
parts  of  Hungary  there  are  still  descendants  of  German  col¬ 
onists  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  who  go  about 
the  country  as  reapers,  retaining  their  old  Saxon  songs  and 
manners,  while  the  more  cultivated  German  emigrants  in  a 
very  short  time  forget  their  own  language,  and  speak  Hunga¬ 
rian.  Another  remarkable  case  of  the  same  kind  is  that  of 
the  Wends,  a  Sclavonic  race  settled  in  Lusatia,  whose  num¬ 
bers  amount  to  two  hundred  thousand,  living  either  scattered 


166 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


among  the  German  population,  or  in  separate  parishes.  They 
have  their  own  schools  and  churches,  and  are  taught  in  the 
Sclavonic  tongue.  The  Catholics  among  them  are  rigid  ad¬ 
herents  of  the  Pope ;  the  Protestants,  not  less  rigid  adherents 
of  Luther,  or  Doctor  Luther,  as  they  are  particular  in  calling 
him  —  a  custom  which,  a  hundred  years  ago,  was  universal 
in  Protestant  Germany.  The  Wend  clings  tenaciously  to  the 
usages  of  his  Church,  and  perhaps  this  may  contribute  not  a 
little  to  the  purity  in  which  he  maintains  the  specific  charac¬ 
teristics  of  his  race.  German  education,  German  law  and 
government,  service  in  the  standing  army,  and  many  othe/ 
agencies,  are  in  antagonism  to  his  national  exclusiveness; 
but  the  wives  and  mothers  here,  as  elsewhere,  are  a  conserva¬ 
tive  influence,  and  the  habits  temporarily  laid  aside  in  the 
outer  world  are  recovered  by  the  fireside.  The  Wends  form 
several  stout  regiments  in  the  Saxon  army  ;  they  are  sought 
far  and  wide,  as  diligent  and  honest  servants ;  and  many  a 
weakly  Dresden  or  Leipzig  child  becomes  thriving  under  the 
care  of  a  Wendish  nurse.  In  their  villages  they  have  the  air 
and  habits  of  genuine,  sturdy  peasants,  and  all  their  cus¬ 
toms  indicate  that  they  have  been,  from  the  first,  an  agricul¬ 
tural  people.  For  example,  they  have  traditional  modes  of 
treating  their  domestic  animals.  Each  cow  has  its  own  name, 
generally  chosen  carefully,  so  as  to  express  the  special  quali¬ 
ties  of  the  animal ;  and  all  important  family  events  are 
narrated  to  the  bees,  a  custom  which  is  found  also  in  West¬ 
phalia.  Whether  by  the  help  of  the  bees  or  not,  the  Wend 
farming  is  especially  prosperous  ;  and  when  a  poor  Bohemian 
peasant  has  a  son  born  to  him,  he  binds  him  to  the  end  of  a 
long  pole  and  turns  his  face  towards  Lusatia,  that  he  may  be 
as  lucky  as  the  Wends,  who  live  there. 

The  peculiarity  of  the  peasant’s  language  consists  chiefly 
in  his  retention  of  historical  peculiarities,  which  gradually 
disappear  under  the  friction  of  cultivated  circles.  He  prefers 
any  proper  name  that  may  be  given  to  a  day  in  the  calendar, 
rather  than  the  abstract  date,  by  which  he  very  rarely  reck¬ 
ons.  In  the  baptismal  names  of  his  children  he  is  guided  by 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  167 


the  old  custom  of  the  country,  not  at  all  by  whim  and  fancy. 
Many  old  baptismal  names,  formerly  common  in  Germany, 
would  have  become  extinct  but  for  their  preservation  among 
the  peasantry,  especially  in  North  Germany;  and  so  firmly 
have  they  adhered  to  local  tradition  in  this  matter,  that  it 
would  be  possible  to  give  a  sort  of  topographical  statistics  of 
proper  names,  and  distinguish  a  district  by  its  rustic  names, 
as  we  do  by  its  Flora  and  Fauna.  The  continuous  inherit¬ 
ance  of  certain  favorite  proper  names  in  a  family,  in  some 
districts,  forces  the  peasant  to  adopt  the  princely  custom  of 
attaching  a  numeral  to  the  name,  and  saying,  when  three 
generations  are  living  at  once,  Hans  I.,  II.,  and  III. ;  or  —  in 
the  more  antique  fashion  —  Hans  the  elder,  the  middle,  and 
the  younger.  In  some  of  our  English  counties  there  is  a 
similar  adherence  to  a  narrow  range  of  proper  names ;  and,  as 
a  mode  of  distinguishing  collateral  branches  in  the  same 
family,  you  will  hear  of  Jonathan’s  Bess,  Thomas’s  Bess,  and 
Samuel’s  Bess  —  the  three  Bessies  being  cousins. 

The  peasant’s  adherence  to  the  traditional  has  much  greater 
inconvenience  than  that  entailed  by  a  paucity  of  proper 
names.  In  the  Black  Forest  and  in  Huttenberg  you  will  see 
him  in  the  dog-days  wearing  a  thick  fur  cap  —  because  it  is 
an  historical  fur  cap,  a  cap  worn  by  his  grandfather.  In  the 
Wetterau,  that  peasant-girl  is  considered  the  handsomest  who 
wears  the  most  petticoats.  To  go  to  field-labor  in  seven 
petticoats  can  be  anything  but  convenient  or  agreeable,  but 
it  is  the  traditionally  correct  thing ;  and  a  German  peasant- 
girl  would  think  herself  as  unfavorably  conspicuous  in  au 
untraditional  costume,  as  an  English  servant-girl  would  now 
think  herself  in  a  linsey-woolsey  apron  or  a  thick  muslin  cap. 
In  many  districts  no  medical  advice  would  induce  the  rustic 
to  renounce  the  tight  leather  belt  with  which  he  injures  his 
digestive  functions ;  you  could  more  easily  persuade  him  to 
smile  on  a  new  communal  system  than  on  the  unliistorical 
invention  of  braces.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  in  spite  of 
the  philanthropic  preachers  of  potatoes,  the  peasant  for 
years  threw  his  potatoes  to  the  pigs  and  the  dogs,  before  he 


168 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


could  be  persuaded  to  put  them  on  his  own  table.  However, 
the  unwillingness  of  the  peasant  to  adopt  innovations  has  a 
not  unreasonable  foundation  in  the  fact,  that  for  him  ex¬ 
periments  are  practical,  not  theoretical,  and  must  be  made 
with  expense  of  money  instead  of  brains  ;  a  fact  that  is  not, 
perhaps,  sufficiently  taken  into  account  by  agricultural  the¬ 
orists,  who  complain  of  the  farmer’s  obstinacy.  The  peas¬ 
ant  has  the  smallest  possible  faith  in  theoretic  knowledge ; 
he  thinks  it  rather  dangerous  than  otherwise,  as  is  well  in¬ 
dicated  by  a  Lower  Rhenish  proverb  :  “  One  is  never  too  old 
to  learn,  said  an  old  woman ;  so  she  learned  to  be  a  witch.” 

Between  many  villages  an  historical  feud,  once  perhaps 
the  occasion  of  much  bloodshed,  is  still  kept  up  under  the 
milder  form  of  an  occasional  round  of  cudgelling,  and  the 
launching  of  traditional  nicknames.  An  historical  feud  of 
this  kind  still  exists,  for  example,  among  many  villages  on 
the  Rhine  and  more  inland  places  in  the  neighborhood. 
Rheinschnacke  (of  which  the  equivalent  is  perhaps  “  water- 
snake  ”)  is  the  standing  term  of  ignominy  for  the  inhabitant 
of  the  Rhine  village,  who  repays  it  in  kind  by  the  epithet 
karst  (mattock)  or  kukuh  (cuckoo),  according  as  the  object 
of  his  hereditary  hatred  belongs  to  the  field  or  the  forest.  If 
any  Romeo  among  the  “  mattocks”  were  to  marry  a  Juliet 
among  the  u  water-snakes,”  there  would  be  no  lack  of  Tybalts 
and  Mercutios  to  carry  the  conflict  from  words  to  blows, 
though  neither  side  knows  a  reason  for  the  enmity. 

A  droll  instance  of  peasant  conservatism  is  told  of  a  village 
on  the  Taunus,  whose  inhabitants,  from  time  immemorial, 
had  been  famous  for  impromptu  cudgelling.  For  this  his¬ 
torical  offence  the  magistrates  of  the  district  had  always 
inflicted  the  equally  historical  punishment  of  shutting  up  the 
most  incorrigible  offenders,  not  in  prison,  but  in  their  own 
pigsty.  In  recent  times,  however,  the  government,  wishing 
to  correct  the  rudeness  of  these  peasants,  appointed  an  “  en¬ 
lightened”  man  as  a  magistrate,  who  at  once  abolished  the 
original  penalty  above  mentioned.  But  this  relaxation  of 
punishment  was  so  far  from  being  welcome  to  the  villagers, 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  169 


that  they  presented  a  petition  praying  that  a  more  energetic 
man  might  be  given  them  as  a  magistrate,  who  would  have 
the  courage  to  punish  according  to  law  and  justice,  aas  had 
been  beforetime.”  And  the  magistrate  who  abolished  in¬ 
carceration  in  the  pigsty  could  never  obtain  the  respect  of 
the  neighborhood.  This  happened  no  longer  ago  than  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century. 

But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  historical  piety  of 
the  German  peasant  extends  to  anything  not  immediately 
connected  with  himself.  He  has  the  warmest  piety  towards 
the  old  tumble-down  house  which  his  grandfather  built,  and 
which  nothing  will  induce  him  to  improve  5  but  towards  the 
venerable  ruins  of  the  old  castle  that  overlooks  his  village, 
he  has  no  piety  at  all,  and  carries  off  its  stones  to  make  a 
fence  for  his  garden,  or  tears  down  the  gothic  carving  of  the 
old  monastic  church,  which  is  “  nothing  to  him,  to  mark  off 
a  foot-path  through  his  field.  It  is  the  same  with  historical 
traditions.  The  peasant  has  them  fresh  in  his  memory,  so 
far  as  they  relate  to  himself.  In  districts  where  the  peasantry 
are  unadulterated,  you  discern  the  remnants  of  the  feudal 
relations  in  innumerable  customs  and  phrases,  but  you  will 
ask  in  vain  for  historical  traditions  concerning  the  empire, 
or  even  concerning  the  particular  princely  house  to  which 
the  peasant  is  subject.  He  can  tell  you  what  “half  people 
and  whole  people  ”  mean ;  in  Hesse  you  will  still  hear  of 
“  four  horses  making  a  whole  peasant,”  or  of  “  four-day  and 
three-day  peasants;”  but  you  will  ask  in  vain  about  Charle¬ 
magne  and  Frederic  Barbarossa. 

Riehl  well  observes  that  the  feudal  system,  which  made 
the  peasant  the  bondman  of  his  lord,  was  an  immense  benefit 
in  a  country,  —  the  greater  part  of  which  had  still  to  be  colon¬ 
ized, —  rescued  the  peasant  from  vagabondage,  and  laid  the 
foundation  of  persistency  and  endurance  in  future  genera¬ 
tions.  If  a  free  German  peasantry  belongs  only  to  modern 
times,  it  is  to  his  ancestor  who  was  a  serf,  —  and  even,  111  the 
earliest  times,  a  slave,  —  that  the  peasant  owes  the  foundation 
of  his  independence,  namely,  his  capability  of  a  settled  ex- 


170 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


istence, —  nay,  his  unreasoning  persistency,  which  has  its 
important  function  in  the  development  of  the  race. 

Perhaps  the  very  worst  result  of  that  unreasoning  persist¬ 
ency  is  the  peasant’s  inveterate  habit  of  litigation.  Every 
one  remembers  the  immortal  description  of  Dandie  Din- 
mont’s  importunate  application  to  Lawyer  Pleydell  to  man¬ 
age  his  “  bit  lawsuit,”  till  at  length  Pleydell  consents  to  help 
him  to  ruin  himself,  on  the  ground  that  Dandie  may  fall  into 
worse  hands.  It  seems  this  is  a  scene  which  has  many 
parallels  in  Germany.  The  farmer’s  lawsuit  is  his  point  of 
honor ;  and  he  will  carry  it  through,  though  he  knows  from 
the  very  first  day  that  he  shall  get  nothing  by  it.  The  lit¬ 
igious  peasant  piques  himself,  like  Mr.  Saddletree,  on  his 
knowledge  of  the  law,  and  this  vanity  is  the  chief  impulse  to 
mnny  a  lawsuit.  To  the  mind  of  the  peasant,  law  presents 
itself  as  the  “  custom  of  the  country,”  and  it  is  his  pride  to 
be  versed  in  all  customs.  Custom  with  him  holds  the  place  of 
sentiment ,  of  theory ,  and ,  in  many  cases,  of  affection.  Pie  hi 
justly  urges  the  importance  of  simplifying  law  proceedings, 
so  as  to  cut  off  this  vanity  at  its  source,  and  also  of  encour¬ 
aging,  by  every  possible  means,  the  practice  of  arbitration. 

The  peasant  never  begins  his  lawsuit  in  summer,  for  the 
same  reason  that  he  does  not  make  love  and  marry  in  sum¬ 
mer,  —  because  he  has  no  time  for  that  sort  of  thing.  Any¬ 
thing  is  easier  to  him  than  to  move  out  of  his  habitual  course, 
and  he  is  attached  even  to  his  privations.  Some  years  ago 
a  peasant  youth,  out  of  the  poorest  and  remotest  region  of 
the  Wester wald,  was  enlisted  as  a  recruit,  at  Weilburg  in 
Nassau.  The  lad,  having  never  in  his  life  slept  in  a  bed, 
when  he  had  got  into  one  for  the  first  time  began  to  cry  like 
a  child ;  and  he  deserted  twice  because  he  could  not  reconcile 
himself  to  sleeping  in  a  bed,  and  to  the  “  fine  ”  life  of  the 
barracks ;  he  was  homesick  at  the  thought  of  his  accustomed 
poverty  and  his  thatched  hut.  A  strong  contrast,  this,  with 
the  feeling  of  the  poor  in  towns,  who  would  be  far  enough 
from  deserting  because  their  condition  was  too  much  im¬ 
proved  !  The  genuine  peasant  is  Dever  ashamed  of  his  rank 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  171 


and  calling ;  lie  is  rather  inclined  to  look  down  on  every  one 
who  does  not  wear  a  smock  frock,  and  thinks  a  man  who  has 
the  manners  of  the  gentry  is  likely  to  be  rather  windy  and 
unsubstantial.  In  some  places,  even  in  French  districts,  this 
feeling  is  strongly  symbolized  by  the  practice  of  the  peasantry, 
on  certain  festival  days,  to  dress  the  images  of  the  saints 
in  peasant’s  clothing.  History  tells  us  of  all  kinds  of  peas¬ 
ant  insurrections,  the  object  of  which  was  to  obtain  relief  for 
the  peasants  from  some  of  their  many  oppressions ;  but  of 
an  effort  on  their  part  to  step  out  of  their  hereditary  rank 
and  calling,  to  become  gentry,  to  leave  the  plough  and  carry 
on  the  easier  business  of  capitalists  or  government-function¬ 
aries,  there  is  no  example. 

The  German  novelists  who  undertake  to  give  pictures  of 
peasant-life,  fall  into  the  same  mistake  as  our  English  novel¬ 
ists  ;  they  transfer  their  own  feelings  to  ploughmen  and 
woodcutters,  and  give  them  both  joys  and  sorrows  of  which 
they  know  nothing.  The  peasant  never  questions  the  obliga¬ 
tion  of  family  ties,  —  he  questions  no  custom ,  —  but  tender 
affection,  as  it  exists  amongst  the  refined  part  of  mankind, 
is  almost  as  foreign  to  him  as  white  hands  and  filbert-shaped 
nails.  That  the  aged  father  who  has  given  up  his  property 
to  his  children  on  condition  of  their  maintaining  him  for  the 
remainder  of  his  life,  is  very  far  from  meeting  with  delicate 
attentions,  is  indicated  by  the  proverb  current  among  the 
peasantry,  “  Don’t  take  your  clothes  off  before  you  go  to 
bed.”  Among  rustic  moral  tales  and  parables,  not  one  is 
more  universal  than  the  story  of  the  ungrateful  children, 
who  made  their  gray-headed  father,  dependent  on  them  for  a 
maintenance,  eat  at  a  wooden  trough,  because  he  shook  the 
food  out  of  his  trembling  hands.  Then  these  same  ungrate¬ 
ful  children  observed  one  day  that  their  own  little  boy  vTas 
making  a  tiny  wooden  trough  ;  and  when  they  asked  him  what 
it  was  for,  he  answered,  that  his  father  and  mother  might 
eat  out  of  it,  when  he  was  a  man  and  had  to  keep  them. 

Marriage  is  a  very  prudential  affair,  especially  among  the 
peasants  who  have  the  largest  share  of  property.  Politic 


172 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELlOt. 


marriages  are  as  common  among  them  as  among  princes ;  and 
when  a  peasant-heiress  in  Westphalia  marries,  her  husband 
adopts  her  name,  and  places  his  own  after  it  with  the  prefix 
geborner  (nee).  The  girls  marry  young,  and  the  rapidity  with 
which  they  get  old  and  ugly  is  one  among  the  many  proofs 
that  the  early  years  of  marriage  are  fuller  of  hardships  than 
of  conjugal  tenderness.  “  When  our  writers  of  village  sto¬ 
ries,”  says  Riehl,  “  transferred  their  own  emotional  life  to 
the  peasant,  they  obliterated  what  is  precisely  his  most  pre¬ 
dominant  characteristic,  namely,  that  with  him  general  cus¬ 
tom  holds  the  place  of  individual  feeling.” 

We  pay  for  greater  emotional  susceptibility  too  often  by 
nervous  diseases  of  which  the  peasant  knows  nothing.  To 
him  headache  is  the  least  of  physical  evils,  because  he  thinks 
headwork  the  easiest  and  least  indispensable  of  all  labor. 
Happily,  many  of  the  younger  sons  in  peasant  families,  by 
going  to  seek  their  living  in  the  towns,  carry  their  hardy 
nervous  system  to  amalgamate  with  the  overwrought  nerves 
of  our  town  population,  and  refresh  them  with  a  little  rude 
vigor.  And  a  return  to  the  habits  of  peasant  life  is  the  best 
remedy  for  many  moral  as  well  as  physical  diseases  induced 
by  perverted  civilization.  Riehl  points  to  colonization  as 
presenting  the  true  field  for  this  regenerative  process.  On 
the  other  side  of  the  ocean,  a  man  will  have  the  courage  to 
begin  life  again  as  a  peasant,  while  at  home,  perhaps,  oppor¬ 
tunity  as  well  as  courage  will  fail  him.  Apropos  of  this 
subject  of  emigration,  he  remarks  the  striking  fact,  that  the 
native  shrewdness  and  mother-wit  of  the  German  peasant 
seem  to  forsake  him  entirely  when  he  has  to  apply  them 
under  new  circumstances,  and  on  relations  foreign  to  his 
experience.  Hence  it  is  that  the  German  peasant  who 
emigrates,  so  constantly  falls  a  victim  to  unprincipled  ad¬ 
venturers  in  the  preliminaries  to  emigration ;  but  if  once  he 
gets  his  foot  on  the  American  soil,  he  exhibits  all  the  first- 
rate  qualities  of  an  agricultural  colonise ;  and  among  all  Ger¬ 
man  emigrants,  the  peasant  class  are  the  most  successful. 

But  many  disintegrating  forces  have  been  at  work  on  the 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  173 


peasant  character,  and  degeneration  is  unhappily  going  on  at 
a  greater  pace  than  development.  In  the  wine  districts 
especially,  the  inability  of  the  small  proprietors  to  bear  up 
ander  the  vicissitudes  of  the  market,  or  to  insure  a  high  qual¬ 
ity  of  wine  by  running  the  risks  of  a  late  vintage,  and  the 
competition  of  beer  and  cider  with  the  inferior  wines,  have 
tended  to  produce  that  uncertainty  of  gain  which,  with  the 
peasant,  is  the  inevitable  cause  of  demoralization.  The  small 
peasant  proprietors  are  not  a  new  class  in  Germany,  but  many 
of  the  evils  of  their  position  are  new.  They  are  more  de¬ 
pendent  on  ready  money  than  formerly  :  thus,  where  a  peas¬ 
ant  used  to  get  his  wood  for  building  and  firing  from  the 
common  forest,  he  has  now  to  pay  for  it  with  hard  cash ;  he 
used  to  thatch  his  own  house,  with  the  help  perhaps  of  a 
neighbor,  but  now  he  pays  a  man  to  do  it  for  him ;  he  used 
to  pay  taxes  in  kind,  he  now  pays  them  in  money.  The 
chances  of  the  market  have  to  be  discounted,  and  the  peasant 
falls  into  the  hands  of  money-lenders.  Here  is  one  of  the 
cases  in  which  social  policy  clashes  with  a  purely  economical 
policy. 

Political  vicissitudes  have  added  their  influence  to  that  of 
economical  changes  in  disturbing  that  dim  instinct,  that 
reverence  for  traditional  custom,  which  is  the  peasant’s  prin¬ 
ciple  of  action.  He  is  in  the  midst  of  novelties  for  which  he 
knows  no  reason  —  changes  in  political  geography,  changes  of 
the  government  to  which  he  owes  fealty,  changes  in  bureau¬ 
cratic  management  and  police  regulations.  He  finds  himself 
in  a  new  element,  before  an  apparatus  for  breathing  in  it  is  de¬ 
veloped  in  him.  His  only  knowledge  of  modern  history  is  in 
some  of  its  results  —  for  instance,  that  he  has  to  pay  heavier 
taxes  from  year  to  year.  His  chief  idea  of  a  government  is 
of  a  power  that  raises  his  taxes,  opposes  his  harmless  cus¬ 
toms,  and  torments  him  with  new  formalities.  The  source  of 
all  this  is  the  false  system  of  “enlightening”  the  peasant 
which  has  been  adopted  by  the  bureaucratic  governments.  A 
system  which  disregards  the  traditions  and  hereditary  attach¬ 
ments  of  the  peasant,  and  appeals  only  to  a  logical  under- 


174 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


standing  which  is  not  yet  developed  in  him,  is  simply  dis¬ 
integrating  and  ruinous  to  the  peasant  character.  The  inter¬ 
ference  with  the  communal  regulations  has  been  of  this  fatal 
character.  Instead  of  endeavoring  to  promote  to  the  utmost 
the  healthy  life  of  the  Commune,  as  an  organism  the  con¬ 
ditions  of  which  are  bound  up  with  the  historical  character¬ 
istics  of  the  peasant,  the  bureaucratic  plan  of  government  is 
bent  on  improvement  by  its  patent  machinery  of  state- 
appointed  functionaries  and  off-liand  regulations  in  accordance 
with  modern  enlightenment.  The  spirit  of  communal  ex¬ 
clusiveness,  the  resistance  to  the  indiscriminate  establish 
ment  of  strangers,  is  an  intense  traditional  feeling  in  the 
peasant.  “  This  gallows  is  for  us  and  our  children,”  is  the 
typical  motto  of  this  spirit.  But  such  exclusiveness  is 
highly  irrational,  and  repugnant  to  modern  liberalism ;  there¬ 
fore  a  bureaucratic  government  at  once  opposes  it,  and 
encourages  to  the  utmost  the  introduction  of  new  inhabitants 
in  the  provincial  communes.  Instead  of  allowing  the  peas¬ 
ants  to  manage  their  own  affairs,  and,  if  they  happen  to 
believe  that  five  and  four  make  eleven,  to  unlearn  the 
prejudice  by  their  own  experience  in  calculation,  so  that  they 
may  gradually  understand  processes,  and  not  merely  see 
results,  bureaucracy  comes  with  its  “  Ready  Reckoner  ”  and 
works  all  the  peasant’s  sums  for  him  —  the  surest  way  of 
maintaining  him  in  his  stupidity,  however  it  may  shake  his 
prejudice. 

Another  questionable  plan  for  elevating  the  peasant  is  the 
supposed  elevation  of  the  clerical  character,  by  preventing 
the  clergyman  from  cultivating  more  than  a  trifling  part  of 
the  land  attached  to  his  benefice,  that  he  may  be  as  much  as 
possible  of  a  scientific  theologian,  and  as  little  as  possible  of 
a  peasant.  In  this,  Riehl  observes,  lies  one  great  source  of 
weakness  to  the  Protestant  Church  as  compared  with  the 
Catholic,  which  finds  the  great  majority  of  its  priests  among 
the  lower  orders ;  and  we  have  had  the  opportunity  of  making 
an  analogous  comparison  in  England,  where  many  of  us  can 
remember  country  districts  in  which  the  great  mass  of  the 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  175 


people  were  Christianized  by  illiterate  Methodist  and  Inde- 
pendent  ministers,  while  the  influence  of  the  parish  clergy¬ 
man  among  the  poor  did  not  extend  much  beyond  a  few  old 
women  in  scarlet  cloaks,  and  a  few  exceptional  church-going 
laborers. 

Bearing  in  mind  the  general  characteristics  of  the  German 
peasant,  it  is  easy  to  understand  his  relation  to  the  revolu¬ 
tionary  ideas  and  revolutionary  movements  of  modern  times. 
The  peasant,  in  Germany  as  elsewhere,  is  a  born  grumbler. 
He  has  always  plenty  of  grievances  in  his  pocket,  but  he 
does  not  generalize  those  grievances ;  he  does  not  complain 
of  government  or  society,  probably  because  he  has  good 
reason  to  complain  of  the  burgomaster.  When  a  few  sparks 
from  the  first  French  Revolution  fell  among  the  German 
peasantry,  and  in  certain  villages  of  Saxony  the  country- 
people  assembled  together  to  write  down  their  demands, 
there  was  no  glimpse  in  their  petition  of  the  universal 
rights  of  man,  but  simply  of  their  own  particular  affairs  as 
Saxon  peasants.  Again,  after  the  July  Revolution  of  1830, 
there  were  many  insignificant  peasant  insurrections ;  but  the 
object  of  almost  all  was  the  removal  of  local  grievances. 
Toll-houses  were  pulled  down  ;  stamped  paper  was  destroyed ; 
in  some  places  there  was  a  persecution  of  wild  boars;  in 
others,  of  that  plentiful  tame  animal,  the  German  Rath ,  or 
councillor  who  is  never  called  into  council.  But  in  1848  it 
seemed  as  if  the  movements  of  the  peasants  had  taken  a  new 
character ;  in  the  small  western  states  of  Germany  it  seemed 
as  if  the  whole  class  of  peasantry  was  in  insurrection.  But, 
in  fact,  the  peasant  did  not  know  the  meaning  of  the  part  he 
was  playing.  He  had  heard  that  everything  was  being  set 
right  in  the  towns,  and  that  wonderful  things  were  happen¬ 
ing  there  ;  so  he  tied  up  his  bundle  and  set  off.  Without  any 
distinct  object  or  resolution,  the  country-people  presented 
themselves  on  the  scene  of  commotion,  and  were  warmly 
received  by  the  party  leaders.  But,  seen  from  the  windows 
of  ducal  palaces  and  ministerial  hotels,  these  swarms  of 
peasants  had  quite  another  aspect,  and  it  was  imagined  that 


176 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


they  had  a  common  plan  of  co-operation.  This,  however, 
the  peasants  have  never  had.  Systematic  co-operation  im¬ 
plies  general  conceptions,  and  a  provisional  subordination 
of  egoism,  to  which  even  the  artisans  of  towns  have  rarely 
shown  themselves  equal,  and  which  are  as  foreign  to  the  mind 
of  the  peasant  as  logarithms  or  the  doctrine  of  chemical  pro¬ 
portions.  And  the  revolutionary  fervor  of  the  peasant  was 
soon  cooled.  The  old  mistrust  of  the  towns  was  reawakened 
on  the  spot.  The  Tyrolese  peasants  saw  no  great  good  in  the 
freedom  of  the  press,  and  the  constitution,  because  these 
changes  “  seemed  to  please  the  gentry  so  much.”  Peasants 
who  had  given  their  voices  stormily  for  a  German  parliament, 
asked  afterwards,  with  a  doubtful  look,  whether  it  were  to  con¬ 
sist  of  infantry  or  cavalry.  When  royal  domains  were  de¬ 
clared  the  property  of  the  state,  the  peasants  in  some  small 
principalities  rejoiced  over  this,  because  they  interpreted  it  to 
mean  that  every  one  would  have  his  share  in  them,  after  the 
manner  of  the  old  common  and  forest  rights. 

The  very  practical  views  of  the  peasants,  with  regard  to 
the  demands  of  the  people,  were  in  amusing  contrast  with  the 
abstract  theorizing  of  the  educated  townsmen.  The  peasant 
continually  withheld  all  state  payments  until  he  saw  how 
matters  would  turn  out,  and  was  disposed  to  reckon  up  the 
solid  benefit,  in  the  form  of  land  or  money,  that  might  come 
to  him  from  the  changes  obtained.  While  the  townsman  was 
heating  his  brains  about  representation  on  the  broadest  basis, 
the  peasant  asked  if  the  relation  between  tenant  and  landlord 
would  continue  as  before,  and  whether  the  removal  of  the 
feudal  obligations  meant  that  the  farmer  should  become 
owner  of  the  land. 

It  is  in  the  same  naive  way  that  Communism  is  interpreted 
by  the  German  peasantry.  The  wide  spread  among  them  of 
communistic  doctrines,  the  eagerness  with  which  they  lis¬ 
tened  to  a  plan  for  the  partition  of  property,  seemed  to  coun¬ 
tenance  the  notion  that  it  was  a  delusion  to  suppose  the 
peasant  would  be  secured  from  this  intoxication  by  his  love 
of  secure  possession  and  peaceful  earnings.  But,  in  fact,  the 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  17? 


peasant  contemplated  partition  by  the  light  of  an  histori¬ 
cal  reminiscence  rather  than  of  novel  theory.  The  golden 
age,  in  the  imagination  of  the  peasant,  was  the  time  when 
every  member  of  the  commune  had  a  right  to  as  much  wood 
from  the  forest  as  would  enable  him  to  sell  some,  after  using 
what  he  wanted  in  firing,  —  in  which  the  communal  posses¬ 
sions  were  so  profitable  that,  instead  of  his  having  to  pay 
rates  at  the  end  of  the  year,  each  member  of  the  commune 
was  something  in  pocket.  Hence  the  peasants  in  general 
understood  by  “  partition  ”  that  the  state  lands,  especially  the 
forests,  would  be  divided  among  the  communes,  and  that,  by 
some  political  legerdemain  or  other,  everybody  would  have 
free  firewood,  free  glazing  for  his  cattle,  and  over  and  above 
that,  a  piece  of  gold  without  working  for  it.  That  he  should 
give  up  a  single  clod  of  his  own  to  further  the  general  par¬ 
tition  had  never  entered  the  mind  of  the  peasant  commun¬ 
ist  ;  and  the  perception  that  this  was  an  essential  preliminary 
to  partition,  was  often  a  sufficient  cure  for  his  Communism. 

In  villages  lying  in  the  neighborhood  of  large  towns, 
however,  where  the  circumstances  of  the  peasantry  are  very 
different,  quite  another  interpretation  of  Communism  is  prev¬ 
alent.  Here  the  peasant  is  generally  sunk  to  the  position 
of  the  proletaire,  living  from  hand  to  mouth  ;  he  has  nothing 
to  lose,  but  everything  to  gain  by  partition.  The  coarse 
nature  of  the  peasant  has  here  been  corrupted  into  bestiality 
by  the  disturbance  of  his  instincts,  while  he  is  as  yet  inca¬ 
pable  of  principles ;  and  in  this  type  of  the  degenerate  peas¬ 
ant  is  seen  the  worst  example  of  ignorance  intoxicated  by 
theory. 

A  significant  hint  as  to  the  interpretation  the  peasants  put 
on  revolutionary  theories  may  be  drawn  from  the  way  they 
employed  the  few  weeks  in  which  their  movements  were  un¬ 
checked.  They  felled  the  forest  trees  and  shot  the  game ; 
they  withheld  taxes ;  they  shook  off  the  imaginary  or  real 
burdens  imposed  on  them  by  their  mediatized  princes,  by 
presenting  their  demands  in  a  very  rough  way  before  the 
ducal  or  princely  Scliloss;  they  ;et  their  faces  against  the 

VOL.  IX.  12 


178 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


bureaucratic  management  of  the  communes,  deposed  the  gov¬ 
ernment  functionaries  who  had  been  placed  over  them  as 
burgomasters  and  magistrates,  and  abolished  the  whole  bu¬ 
reaucratic  system  of  procedure,  simply  by  taking  no  notice 
of  its  regulations,  and  recurring  to  some  tradition,  some  old 
order  or  disorder  of  things.  In  all  this  it  is  clear  that  they 
were  animated  not  in  the  least  by  the  spirit  of  modern  revo¬ 
lution,  but  by  a  purely  narrow  and  personal  impulse  towards 
reaction. 

The  idea  of  constitutional  government  lies  quite  beyond 
the  range  of  the  German  peasant’s  conceptions.  His  only 
notion  of  representation  is  that  of  a  representation  of  ranks, 
of  classes ;  his  only  notion  of  a  deputy  is  of  one  who  takes 
Bare,  not  of  the  national  welfare,  but  of  the  interests  of  his 
own  order.  Herein  lay  the  great  mistake  of  the  democratic 
party,  in  common  with  the  bureaucratic  governments,  that 
they  entirely  omitted  the  peculiar  character  of  the  peasant 
from  their  political  calculations.  They  talked  of  the  peo¬ 
ple,  and  forgot  that  the  peasants  were  included  in  the  term. 
Only  a  baseless  misconception  of  the  peasant’s  character 
could  induce  the  supposition  that  he  would  feel  the  slightest 
enthusiasm  about  the  principles  involved  in  the  reconstitu¬ 
tion  of  the  Empire,  or  even  about  the  reconstitution  itself. 
He  has  no  zeal  for  a  written  law,  as  such,  but  only  so  far  as 
it  takes  the  form  of  a  living  law,  a  tradition.  It  was  the 
external  authority  which  the  revolutionary  party  had  won  in 
Baden  that  attracted  the  peasants  into  a  participation  of  the 
struggle. 

Such,  Ptielil  tells  us,  are  the  general  characteristics  of  the 
German  peasantry,  characteristics  which  subsist  amidst  a 
wide  variety  of  circumstances.  In  Mecklenburg,  Pomerania, 
and  Brandenburg,  the  peasant  lives  on  extensive  estates  ;  in 
Westphalia  he  lives  in  large  isolated  homesteads;  in  the 
Wester wald  and  in  Sauerland,  in  little  groups  of  villages  and 
hamlets  ;  on  the  Pliine,  land  is  for  the  most  part  parcelled 
out  among  small  proprietors,  who  live  together  in  large  vil¬ 
lages.  Then,  of  course,  the  diversified  physical  geography  of 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  179 


Germany  gives  rise  to  equally  diversified  methods  of  land- 
culture  ;  and  out  of  these  various  circumstances  grow  numer¬ 
ous  specific  differences  in  manner  and  character.  But  the 
generic  character  of  the  German  peasant  is  everywhere  the 
same,  — in  the  clean  mountain-liamlet  and  in  the  dirty  fishing- 
village  on  the  coast,  in  the  plains  of  North  Germany  and  in 
the  backwoods  of  America.  “  Everywhere  he  has  the  same 
historical  character,  everywhere  custom  is  his  supreme  law. 
Where  religion  and  patriotism  are  still  a  naive  instinct,  are 
still  a  sacred  custom,  there  begins  the  class  of  the  German 
Peasantry.” 

Our  readers  will  perhaps  already  have  gathered  from  the 
foregoing  portrait  of  the  German  peasant,  that  Riehl  is  not  a 
man  who  looks  at  objects  through  the  spectacles  either  of  the 
doctrinaire  or  the  dreamer ;  and  they  will  be  ready  to  believe 
what  he  tells  us  in  his  Preface,  namely,  that  years  ago  he 
began  his  wanderings  over  the  hills  and  plains  of  Germany 
for  the  sake  of  obtaining,  in  immediate  intercourse  with 
the  people,  that  completion  of  his  historical,  political,  and 
economical  studies  which  he  was  unable  to  find  in  books. 
He  began  his  investigations  with  no  party  prepossessions, 
and  his  present  views  were  evolved  entirely  from  his  own 
gradually  amassed  observations.  He  was,  first  of  all,  a  pedes¬ 
trian,  and  only  in  the  second  place  a  political  author.  The 
views  at  which  he  has  arrived  by  this  inductive  process  he 
sums  up  in  the  term,  social-political-conservatism ;  but  his 
conservatism  is,  we  conceive,  of  a  thoroughly  philosophical 
kind.  He  sees  in  European  society  incarnate  history,  and 
any  attempt  to  disengage  it  from  its  historical  elements  must, 
he  believes,  be  simply  destructive  of  social  vitality.1  What 
has  grown  up  historically  can  only  die  out  historically,  by 
the  gradual  operation  of  necessary  laws.  The  external  con¬ 
ditions  which  society  has  inherited  from  the  past  are  but  the 
manifestation  of  inherited  internal  conditions  in  the  human 

1  Throughout  this  article,  in  our  statement  of  Riehl’s  opinions,  we  must 
he  understood  not  as  quoting  Riehl,  but  as  interpreting  »\'d  : ? 
him. 


180 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT- 


beings  who  compose  it ;  the  internal  conditions  and  the  exter 
nal  are  related  to  each  other  as  the  organism  and  its  medium, 
and  development  can  take  place  only  by  the  gradual  consen¬ 
taneous  development  of  both.  Take  the  familiar  example  of 
attempts  to  abolish  titles,  which  have  been  about  as  effective 
as  the  process  of  cutting  off  poppy-heads  in  a  cornfield.  Je- 
dem  Menschen ,  says  Rielil,  ist  sein  Zopf  angeboren,  warum  soil 
denn  der  sociale  Sprachgebrauch  nicht  auch  sein  Zopf  haben  ? 
—  which  we  may  render  :  “  As  long  as  snobbism  runs  in  the 
blood,  why  should  it  not  run  in  our  speech  ?  ”  As  a  neces¬ 
sary  preliminary  to  a  purely  rational  society,  you  must  ob¬ 
tain  purely  rational  men,  free  from  the  sweet  and  bitter 
prejudices  of  hereditary  affection  and  antipathy ;  which  is  as 
easy  as  to  get  running  streams  without  springs,  or  the  leafy 
shade  of  the  forest  without  the  secular  growth  of  trunk  and 
branch. 

The  historical  conditions  of  society  may  be  compared  with 
those  of  language.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  language  of 
cultivated  nations  is  in  anything  but  a  rational  state;  the 
great  sections  of  the  civilized  world  are  only  approximatively 
intelligible  to  each  other,  —  and  even  that,  only  at  the  cost 
of  long  study ;  one  word  stands  for  many  things,  and  many 
words  for  one  thing ;  the  subtle  shades  of  meaning,  and  still 
subtler  echoes  of  association,  make  language  an  instrument 
which  scarcely  anything  short  of  genius  can  wield  with  defi¬ 
niteness  and  certainty.  Suppose,  then,  that  the  effect  which 
has  been  again  and  again  made  to  construct  a  universal  lan¬ 
guage  on  a  rational  basis  has  at  length  succeeded,  and  that 
you  have  a  language  which  has  no  uncertainty,  no  whims  of 
idiom,  no  cumbrous  forms,  no  fitful  simmer  of  many-hued 
significance,  no  hoary  archaisms  “  familiar  with  forgotten 
years,”  —  a  patent  deodorized  and  non-resonant  language, 
which  effects  the  purpose  of  communication  as  perfectly  and 
rapidly  as  algebraic  signs.  Your  language  may  be  a  perfect 
medium  of  expression  to  science,  but  will  never  express  life, 
r%’ch  is  a  great  deal  more  than  science.  With  the  anomalies 
inconveniences  of  historical  language,  you  will  have 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  181 


parted  with  its  music  and  its  passions,  and  its  vital  qualities 
as  an  expression  of  individual  character,  with  its  subtle  capa¬ 
bilities  of  wit,  with  everything  that  gives  it  power  over  the 
imagination ;  and  the  next  step  in  simplification  will  be  the 
invention  of  a  talking  watch,  which  will  achieve  the  utmost 
facility  and  despatch  in  the  communication  of  ideas  by  a 
graduated  adjustment  of  ticks,  to  be  represented  in  writing 
by  a  corresponding  arrangement  of  dots.  A  melancholy  “  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  future  !  ”  The  sensory  and  motor  nerves,  that 
run  in  the  same  sheath,  are  scarcely  bound  together  by  a 
more  necessary  and  delicate  union  than  that  which  binds  men’s 
affections,  imagination,  wit,  and  humor,  with  the  subtle  rami¬ 
fications  of  historical  language.  Language  must  be  left  to 
grow  in  precision,  completeness,  and  unity,  as  minds  grow  in 
clearness,  comprehensiveness,  and  sympathy.  And  there  is 
an  analogous  relation  between  the  moral  tendencies  of  men 
and  the  social  conditions  they  have  inherited.  The  nature  of 
European  men  has  its  roots  intertwined  with  the  past,  and  can 
only  be  developed  by  allowing  those  roots  to  remain  undis¬ 
turbed  while  the  process  of  development  is  going  on,  until 
that  perfect  ripeness  of  the  seed  which  carries  with  it  a  life 
independent  of  the  root.  This  vital  connection  with  the  past 
is  much  more  vividly  felt  on  the  Continent  than  in  England, 
where  we  have  to  recall  it  by  an  effort  of  memory  and  reflec¬ 
tion  ;  for  though  our  English  life  is  in  its  core  intensely  tra¬ 
ditional,  Protestantism  and  commerce  have  modernized  the 
face  of  the  land  and  the  aspects  of  society  in  a  far  greater 
degree  than  in  any  Continental  country  :  — 

<l  Abroad,”  says  Ruskin,  u  a  building  of  the  eighth  or  tenth  century 
stands  ruinous  in  the  open  streets ;  the  children  play  round  it,  the 
peasants  heap  their  coni  in  it.  The  buildings  of  yesterday  nestle  about 
it,  and  fit  their  new  stones  in  its  rents,  and  tremble  in  sympathy  as  it 
trembles.  No  one  wonders  at  it,  or  thinks  of  it  as  separate,  and  of  an¬ 
other  time;  we  feel  the  ancient  world  to  be  a  real  thing,  and  one  with 
the  new;  antiquity  is  no  dream;  it  is  rather  the  children  playing  about 
the  old  stones  that  are  the  dream.  But  all  is  continuous,  and  the 
words  ‘from  generation  to  generation/  understandable  here.  ” 


182 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


This  conception  of  European  society  as  incarnate  history, 
is  the  fundamental  idea  of  Riehl’s  books.  After  the  notable 
failure  of  revolutionary  attempts  conducted  from  the  point  of 
view  of  abstract  democratic  and  socialistic  theories,  after  the 
practical  demonstration  of  the  evils  resulting  from  a  bureau¬ 
cratic  system,  which  governs  by  an  undiscriminating,  dead 
mechanism,  Riehl  wishes  to  urge  on  the  consideration  of  his 
countrymen  a  social  policy  founded  on  the  special  study  of 
the  people  as  they  are,  —  on  the  natural  history  of  the  various 
social  ranks.  He  thinks  it  wise  to  pause  a  little  from  the¬ 
orizing,  and  see  what  is  the  material  actually  present  for 
theory  to  work  upon.  It  is  the  glory  of  the  socialists  —  in 
contrast  with  the  democratic  doctrinaires  who  have  been  too 
much  occupied  with  the  general  idea  of  “  the  people  ”  to  in¬ 
quire  particularly  into  the  actual  life  of  the  people  —  that 
they  have  thrown  themselves  with  enthusiastic  zeal  into  the 
study  at  least  of  one  social  group,  namely,  the  factory  opera¬ 
tives  ;  and  here  lies  the  secret  of  their  partial  success.  But 
unfortunately  they  have  made  this  special  duty  of  a  single 
fragment  of  society  the  basis  of  a  theory  which  quietly  sub¬ 
stitutes  for  the  small  group  of  Parisian  proletaires  or  English 
factory -workers,  the  society  of  all  Europe,  —  nay,  of  the 
whole  world.  And  in  this  way  they  have  lost  the  best  fruit 
of  their  investigations.  Eor,  says  Bielil,  the  more  deeply  we 
penetrate  into  the  knowledge  of  society  in  its  details,  the 
more  thoroughly  we  shall  be  convinced  that  a  universal  social 
policy  has  no  validity  except  on  paper ,  and  can  never  be  carried 
into  successful  practice.  The  conditions  of  German  society 
are  altogether  different  from  those  of  French,  of  English,  or 
of  Italian  society ;  and  to  apply  the  same  social  theory  to 
these  nations  indiscriminately,  is  about  as  wise  a  procedure 
as  Triptolemus  Yellowley’s  application  of  the  agricultural 
directions  in  Virgil’s  “Georgies”  to  his  farm  in  the  Shetland 
Isles. 

It  is  the  clear  and  strong  light  in  which  Riehl  places  this 
important  position,  that  in  our  opinion  constitutes  the  sug¬ 
gestive  value  of  his  books  for  foreign  as  well  as  German 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  188 


readers.  It  has  not  been  sufficiently  insisted  on,  that  in  the 
various  branches  of  Social  Science  there  is  an  advance  from 
the  general  to  the  special,  from  the  simple  to  the  complex, 
analogous  with  that  which  is  found  in  the  series  of  the 
sciences,  from  mathematics  to  biology.  To  the  laws  of  quan¬ 
tity,  comprised  in  mathematics  and  physics,  are  superadded, 
in  chemistry,  laws  of  quality ;  to  these  again  are  added,  in 
biology,  laws  of  life ;  and  lastly,  the  conditions  of  life  in  gen¬ 
eral  branch  out  into  its  special  conditions,  or  natural  history, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  into  its  abnormal  conditions,  or  pathol¬ 
ogy,  on  the  other.  And  in  this  series  or  ramification  of  the 
sciences,  the  more  general  science  will  not  suffice  to  solve 
the  problems  of  the  more  special.  Chemistry  embraces  phe¬ 
nomena  which  are  not  explicable  by  physics  ;  biology  em¬ 
braces  phenomena  which  are  not  explicable  by  chemistry  ;  and 
no  biological  generalization  will  enable  us  to  predict  the  in¬ 
finite  specialities  produced  by  the  complexity  of  vital  con¬ 
ditions.  So  Social  Science,  while  it  has  departments  which 
in  their  fundamental  generality  correspond  to  mathematics 
and  physics,  — namely,  those  grand  and  simple  generalizations 
which  trace  out  the  inevitable  march  of  the  human  race  as  a 
whole,  and,  as  a  ramification  of  these,  the  laws  of  economical 
science,  —  has  also,  in  the  departments  of  government  and  ju¬ 
risprudence,  which  embrace  the  conditions  of  social  life  in  all 
their  complexity,  what  may  be  called  its  biology,  carrying  us 
on  to  innumerable  special  phenomena  which  outlie  the  sphere 
of  science,  and  belong  to  natural  history.  And  just  as  the 
most  thorough  acquaintance  with  physics  or  chemistry  or 
general  physiology  will  not  enable  you  at  once  to  establish 
the  balance  of  life  in  your  private  vivarium,  so  that  your 
particular  society  of  zoophytes,  molluscs,  and  ecliinoderms 
may  feel  themselves,  as  the  Germans  say,  at  ease  in  their 
skin ;  so  the  most  complete  equipment  of  theory  will  not 
enable  a  statesman  or  a  political  and  social  reformer  to  adjust 
his  measures  wisely,  in  the  absence  of  a  special  acquaintance 
with  the  section  of  society  for  which  he  legislates,  with  the 
peculiar  characteristics  of  the  nation,  the  province,  the  class 


184 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


whose  well-being  he  has  to  consult.  In  other  words,  a  wise 
social  policy  must  be  based  not  simply  on  abstract  social 
science,  but  on  the  natural  history  of  social  bodies. 

Riehl’s  books  are  not  dedicated  merely  to  the  argumentative 
maintenance  of  this  or  of  any  other  position ;  they  are  in¬ 
tended  chiefly  as  a  contribution  to  that  knowledge  of  the 
German  people  on  the  importance  of  which  he  insists.  He 
is  less  occupied  with  urging  his  own  conclusions,  than  with 
impressing  on  his  readers  the  facts  which  have  led  him  to 
those  conclusions.  In  the  volume  entitled  “  Land  und  Leute,” 
which,  though  published  last,  is  properly  an  introduction  to 
the  volume  entitled  “  Die  Burgerliche  Gesellschaft,”  he  con¬ 
siders  the  German  people  in  their  physical-geographical  rela¬ 
tions  ;  he  compares  the  natural  divisions  of  the  race,  as 
determined  by  land  and  climate  and  social  traditions,  with 
the  artificial  divisions  which  are  based  on  diplomacy ;  and  he 
traces  the  genesis  and  influences  of  what  we  may  call  the 
ecclesiastical  geography  of  Germany,  —  its  partition  between 
Catholicism  and  Protestantism.  He  shows  that  the  ordinary 
antithesis  of  North  and  South  Germany  represents  no  real 
ethnographical  distinction,  and  that  the  natural  divisions  of 
Germany,  founded  on  its  physical  geography,  are  threefold,  — 
namely,  the  low  plains,  the  middle  mountain  region,  and  the 
high  mountain  region,  or  Lower,  Middle,  and  Upper  Germany; 
and  on  this  primary  natural  division  all  the  other  broad  ethno¬ 
graphical  distinctions  of  Germany  will  be  found  to  rest.  The 
plains  of  North  or  Lower  Germany  include  all  the  seaboard 
the  nation  possesses;  and  this,  together  with  the  fact  that 
the}-  are  traversed  to  the  depth  of  six  hundred  miles  by  nav¬ 
igable  rivers,  makes  them  the  natural  seat  of  a  trading  race. 
Quite  different  is  the  geographical  character  of  Middle  Ger¬ 
many.  While  the  northern  plains  are  marked  off  into  great 
divisions,  by  such  rivers  as  the  Lower  Rhine,  the  Weser,  and 
the  Oder,  running  almost  in  parallel  lines,  this  central  region 
is  cut  up  like  a  mosaic  by  the  capricious  lines  of  valleys  and 
rivers.  Here  is  the  region  in  which  you  find  those  famous 
roofs  from  which  the  rain-water  runs  towards  two  different 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  185 


seas,  and  the  mountain-tops  from  which  you  may  look  into 
eight  or  ten  German  States.  The  abundance  of  water-power 
and  the  presence  of  extensive  coal-mines  allow  of  a  very 
diversified  industrial  development  in  Middle  Germany.  In 
Upper  Germany,  or  the  high  mountain  region,  we  find  the 
same  symmetry  in  the  lines  of  the  rivers  as  in  the  north  ; 
almost  all  the  great  Alpine  streams  flow  parallel  with  the 
Danube.  But  the  majority  of  these  rivers  are  neither  nav¬ 
igable  nor  available  for  industrial  objects,  and  instead  of 
serving  for  communication,  they  shut  off  one  great  tract  from 
another.  The  slow  development,  the  simple  peasant  life  of 
many  districts,  is  here  determined  by  the  mountain  and  the 
river.  In  the  southeast,  however,  industrial  activity  spreads 
through  Bohemia  towards  Austria,  and  forms  a  sort  of  balance 
to  the  industrial  districts  of  the  Lower  Rhine.  Of  course, 
the  boundaries  of  these  three  regions  cannot  be  very  strictly  de¬ 
fined  ;  but  an  approximation  to  the  limits  of  Middle  Germany 
may  be  obtained  by  regarding  it  as  a  triangle,  of  which  one 
angle  lies  in  Silesia,  another  in  Aix-la-Chapelle,  and  a  third 
at  Lake  Constance. 

This  triple  division  corresponds  with  the  broad  distinctions 
of  climate.  In  the  northern  plains  the  atmosphere  is  damp 
and  heavy;  in  the  southern  mountain  region  it  is  dry  and 
rare,  and  there  are  abrupt  changes  of  temperature,  sharp 
contrasts  between  the  seasons,  and  devastating  storms ;  but 
in  both  these  zones  men  are  hardened  by  conflict  with  the 
roughnesses  of  the  climate.  In  Middle  Germany,  on  the 
contrary,  there  is  little  of  this  struggle  ;  the  seasons  are  more 
equable,  and  the  mild,  soft  air  of  the  valleys  tends  to  make 
the  inhabitants  luxurious  and  sensitive  to  hardships.  It  is 
only  in  exceptional  mountain  districts  that  one  is  here  re¬ 
minded  of  the  rough,  bracing  air  on  the  heights  of  Southern 
Germany.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that,  as  the  air  becomes  grad¬ 
ually  lighter  and  rarer,  from  the  North  German  coast  towards 
Upper  Germany,  the  average  of  suicides  regularly  decreases. 
Mecklenburg  has  the  highest  number,  then  Prussia,  while  the 
fewest  suicides  occur  in  Bavaria  and  Austria. 


186 


ESSAYS  OF  GEOEGE  ELIOT. 


Both  the  northern  and  southern  regions  have  still  a  large 
extent  of  waste  lands, — downs,  morasses,  and  heaths  ;  and  to 
these  are  added,  in  the  south,  abundance  of  snow-fields  and 
naked  rock ;  while  in  Middle  Germany  culture  has  almost 
overspread  the  face  of  the  land,  and  there  are  no  large  tracts 
of  waste.  There  is  the  same  proportion  in  the  distribution 
of  forests.  Again,  in  the  north  we  see  a  monotonous  contin¬ 
uity  of  wheat-fields,  potato-grounds,  meadow-lands,  and  vast 
heaths,  and  there  is  the  same  uniformity  of  culture  over 
large  surfaces  in  the  southern  table-lands,  and  the  Alpine 
pastures.  In  Middle  Germany,  on  the  contrary,  there  is  a 
perpetual  variety  of  crops  within  a  short  space ;  the  diversity 
of  land  surface,  and  the  corresponding  variety  in  the  species 
of  plants,  are  an  invitation  to  the  splitting  up  of  estates,  and 
this  again  encourages  to  the  utmost  the  motley  character  of 
the  cultivation. 

According  to  this  threefold  division,  it  appears  that  there 
are  certain  features  common  to  North  and  South  Germany,  in 
which  they  differ  from  Central  Germany,  and  the  nature  of 
this  difference  Biehl  indicates  by  distinguishing  the  former 
as  Centralized  Land,  and  the  latter  as  Individualized  Land ; 
a  distinction  which  is  well  symbolized  by  the  fact  that  North 
and  South  Germany  possess  the  great  lines  of  railway  which 
are  the  medium  for  the  traffic  of  the  world,  while  Middle 
Germany  is  far  richer  in  lines  for  local  communication,  and 
possesses  the  greatest  length  of  railway  within  the  smallest 
space.  Disregarding  superficialities,  the  East  Erieslanders, 
the  Schleswig-Holsteiners,  the  Mecklenburghers,  and  the 
Pomeranians  are  much  more  nearly  allied  to  the  old  Bava¬ 
rians,  the  Tyrolese,  and  the  Styrians,  than  any  of  these  are 
allied  to  the  Saxons,  the  Thuringians,  or  the  Bhinelanders. 
Both  in  North  and  South  Germany  original  races  are  still 
found  in  large  masses,  and  popular  dialects  are  spoken ;  you 
still  find  there  thoroughly  peasant  districts,  thorough  vil¬ 
lages,  and  also,  at  great  intervals,  thorough  cities ;  you  still 
find  there  a  sense  of  rank.  In  Middle  Germany,  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  the  original  races  are  fused  together,  or  sprinkled 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  187 


hither  and  thither ;  the  peculiarities  of  the  popular  dialects 
are  worn  down  or  confused ;  there  is  no  very  strict  line  of 
demarcation  between  the  country  and  the  town  population, 
hundreds  of  small  towns  and  large  villages  being  hardly  dis¬ 
tinguishable  in  their  characteristics  ;  aud  the  sense  of  rank,  as 
part  of  the  organic  structure  of  society,  is  almost  extinguished. 
Again,  both  in  the  north  and  south  there  is  still  a  strong 
ecclesiastical  spirit  in  the  people,  and  the  Pomeranian  sees 
Antichrist  in  the  Pope  as  clearly  as  the  Tyrolese  sees  him  in 
Doctor  Luther ;  while  in  Middle  Germany  the  confessions 
are  mingled,  they  exist  peaceably  side  by  side  in  very  narrow 
space,  and  tolerance  or  indifference  has  spread  itself  widely, 
even  in  the  popular  mind.  And  the  analogy,  or  rather  the 
causal  relation  between  the  physical  geography  of  the  three 
regions  and  the  development  of  the  population,  goes  still 
further. 

“  For,”  observes  Riehl,  “the  striking  connection  which  has  been 
pointed  out  between  the  local  geological  formations  in  Germany,  and 
the  revolutionary  disposition  of  the  people,  has  more  than  a  metaphor¬ 
ical  significance.  Where  the  primeval  physical  revolutions  of  the 
globe  have  been  the  wildest  in  their  effects,  and  the  most  multiform 
strata  have  been  tossed  together  or  thrown  one  upon  the  other,  it  is  a 
very  intelligible  consequence  that  on  a  land  surface  thus  broken  up 
the  population  should  sooner  develop  itself  into  small  communities, 
aud  that  the  more  intense  life  generated  in  these  smaller  communities 
should  become  the  most  favorable  nidus  for  the  reception  of  modem 
culture,  and  with  this  a  susceptibility  for  its  revolutionary  ideas ;  while 
a  people  settled  in  a  region  where  its  groups  are  spread  over  a  large 
space  will  persist  much  more  obstinately  in  the  retention  of  its  original 
character.  The  people  of  Middle  Germany  have  none  of  that  exclu¬ 
sive  one-sidedness  which  determines  the  peculiar  genius  of  great 
national  groups,  just  as  this  one-sidedness,  or  uniformity,  is  wanting  to 
the  geological  and  geographical  character  of  their  land.” 

This  ethnographical  outline  Riehl  fills  up  with  special  and 
typical  descriptions,  and  then  makes  it  the  starting-point  for 
a  criticism  of  the  actual  political  condition  of  Germany.  The 
volume  is  full  of  vivid  pictures,  as  well  as  penetrating  glances 


188 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


into  the  maladies  and  tendencies  of  modern  society.  It 
would  be  fascinating  as  literature,  if  it  were  not  important 
for  its  facts  and  philosophy.  But  we  can  only  commend  it 
to  our  readers,  and  pass  on  to  the  volume  entitled  “  Die  Biir- 
gerliche  Gesellscliaft,”  from  which  we  have  drawn  our  sketch 
of  the  German  peasantry.  Here  Riehl  gives  us  a  series  of 
studies  in  that  natural  history  of  the  people,  which  he  re¬ 
gards  as  the  proper  basis  of  social  policy.  He  holds  that,  in 
European  society,  there  are  three  natural  ranks,  or  estates  : 
the  hereditary  landed  aristocracy,  the  citizens  or  commercial 
class,  and  the  peasantry,  or  agricultural  class.  By  natural 
ranks  he  means  ranks  which  have  their  roots  deep  in  the 
historical  structure  of' society,  and  are  still,  in  the  present, 
showing  vitality  above  ground ;  he  means  those  great  social 
groups  which  are  not  only  distinguished  externally  by  their 
vocation,  but  essentially  by  their  mental  character,  their 
habits,  their  mode  of  life, — by  the  principle  they  represent 
in  the  historical  development  of  society.  In  his  conception 
of  the  Fourth  Estate  he  differs  from  the  usual  interpreta¬ 
tion,  according  to  which  it  is  simply  equivalent  to  the  prole¬ 
tariat,  or  those  who  are  dependent  on  daily  wages,  whose 
only  capital  is  their  skill  or  bodily  strength  —  factory  opera¬ 
tives,  artisans,  agricultural  laborers,  to  whom  might  be  added,, 
especially  in  Germany,  the  day-laborers  with  the  quill,  the 
literary  proletariat.  This,  Riehl  observes,  is  a  valid  basis  of 
economical  classification,  but  not  of  social  classification.  In 
his  view,  the  Fourth  Estate  is  a  stratum  produced  by  the 
perpetual  abrasion  of  the  other  great  social  groups ;  it  is  the 
sign  and  result  of  the  decomposition  which  is  commencing  in 
the  organic  constitution  of  society.  Its  elements  are  derived 
alike  from  the  aristocracy,  the  bourgeoisie,  and  the  peasantry. 
It  assembles  under  its  banner  the  deserters  of  historical  so¬ 
ciety,  and  forms  them  into  a  terrible  army,  which  is  only 
just  awaking  to  the  consciousness  of  its  corporate  power. 
The  tendency  of  this  Fourth  Estate,  by  the  very  process  of  its 
formation,  is  to  do  away  with  the  distinctive  historical  chav 
acter  of  the  other  estates,  and  to  resolve  their  peculiar  rank 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  189 


and  vocation  into  a  uniform  social  relation,  founded  on  an 
abstract  conception  of  society.  According  to  Riebl’s  classifi¬ 
cation,  the  day -laborers,  whom  the  political  economist  desig¬ 
nates  as  the  Fourth  Estate,  belong  partly  to  the  peasantry,  or 
agricultural  class,  and  partly  to  the  citizens,  or  commercial 
class. 

Riehl  considers,  in  the  first  place,  the  peasantry  and  aris¬ 
tocracy  as  the  “forces  of  social  persistence,”  and,  in  the 
second,  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  Fourth  Estate  as  the  “forces 
of  social  movement.” 

The  aristocracy,  he  observes,  is  the  only  one  among  these 
four  groups  which  is  denied  by  others  besides  Socialists  to 
have  any  natural  basis  as  a  separate  rank.  It  is  admitted 
that  there  was  once  an  aristocracy  which  had  an  intrinsic 
ground  of  existence  ;  but  now,  it  is  alleged,  this  is  an  histori¬ 
cal  fossil,  an  antiquarian  relic,  venerable  because  gray  with 
age.  In  what,  it  is  asked,  can  consist  the  peculiar  vocation 
of  the  aristocracy,  since  it  has  no  longer  the  monopoly  of  the 
land,  of  the  higher  military  functions,  and  of  government 
offices,  and  since  the  service  of  the  Court  has  no  longer  any 
political  importance  ?  To  this  Eiehl  replies,  that  in  great 
revolutionary  crises,  the  “men  of  progress”  have  more  than 
once  abolished  the  aristocracy.  But,  remarkably  enough, 
the  aristocracy  has  always  reappeared.  This  measure  of 
abolition  showed  that  the  nobility  were  no  longer  regarded 
as  a  real  class,  for  to  abolish  a  real  class  would  be  an  absurd¬ 
ity.  It  is  quite  possible  to  contemplate  a  voluntary  break¬ 
ing  up  of  the  peasant  or  citizen  class  in  the  socialistic  sense, 
but  no  man  in  his  senses  would  think  of  straightway  abol¬ 
ishing  citizens  and  peasants.  The  aristocracy,  then,  was 
regarded  as  a  sort  of  cancer,  or  excrescence  of  society.  Nev¬ 
ertheless,  not  only  has  it  been  found  impossible  to  annihilate 
an  hereditary  nobility  by  decree,  but,  also,  the  aristocracy  oi 
the  eighteenth  century  outlived  even  the  self-destructive  acts 
of  its  own  perversity.  A  life  which  was  entirely  without 
object,  entirely  destitute  of  functions,  would  not,  says  Eiehl, 
be  so  persistent.  He  has  an  acute  criticism  of  those  who 


190 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


conduct  a  polemic  against  the  idea  of  an  hereditary  aristoc¬ 
racy,  while  they  are  proposing  an  “aristocracy  of  talent,” 
which,  after  all,  is  based  on  the  principle  of  inheritance. 
The  Socialists  are,  therefore,  only  consistent  in  declaring 
against  an  aristocracy  of  talent.  “But  when  they  have 
turned  the  world  into  a  great  foundling  hospital,  they  will 
still  be  unable  to  eradicate  the  ‘privileges  of  birth.’”  We 
must  not  follow  him  in  his  criticism,  however ;  nor  can  we 
afford  to  do  more  than  mention  hastily  his  interesting  sketch 
of  the  mediaeval  aristocracy,  and  his  admonition  to  the  Ger¬ 
man  aristocracy  of  the  present  day,  that  the  vitality  of  their 
class  is  not  to  be  sustained  by  romantic  attempts  to  revive 
mediaeval  forms  and  sentiments,  but  only  by  the  exercise  of 
functions  as  real  and  salutary  for  actual  society  as  those  of 
the  mediaeval  aristocracy  were  for  the  feudal  age.  “  In  mod¬ 
ern  society  the  divisions  of  rank  indicate  division  of  labor , 
according  to  that  distribution  of  functions  in  the  social  or¬ 
ganism  which  the  historical  constitution  of  society  has  deter¬ 
mined.  In  this  way  the  principle  of  differentiation  and  the 
principle  of  unity  are  identical.” 

The  elaborate  study  of  the  German  bourgeoisie,  which 
forms  the  next  division  of  the  volume,  must  be  passed  over ; 
but  we  may  pause  a  moment  to  note  Riehl’s  definition  of  the 
social  Philister  (Philistine),  an  epithet  for  which  we  have  no 
equivalent,  —  not  at  all,  however,  for  want  of  the  object  it  rep¬ 
resents.  Most  people,  who  read  a  little  German,  know  that 
the  epithet  Philister  originated  in  the  Burschen-leben,  or  stu¬ 
dent-life  of  Germany,  and  that  the  antithesis  of  Bursch  and 
Philister  was  equivalent  to  the  antithesis  of  “  gown  and 
town  ;  ”  but  since  the  word  has  passed  into  ordinary  language, 
it  has  assumed  several  shades  of  significance  which  have 
not  yet  been  merged  in  a  single,  absolute  meaning ;  and  one 
of  the  questions  which  an  English  visitor  in  Germany  will 
probably  take  an  opportunity  of  asking  is,  “  What  is  the  strict 
meaning  of  the  word  Philister  ?  ”  Riehl’s  answer  is,  that  the 
Philister  is  one  who  is  indifferent  to  all  social  interests,  all 
public  life,  as  distinguished  from  selfish  and  private  interests ; 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  191 


he  has  no  sympathy  with  political  and  social  events  except 
as  they  affect  his  own  comfort  and  prosperity,  as  they  offer 
him  material  for  amusement  or  opportunity  for  gratifying  his 
vanity.  He  has  no  social  or  political  creed,  but  is  always  of 
the  opinion  which  is  most  convenient  for  the  moment.  He 
is  always  in  the  majority,  and  is  the  main  element  of  unreason 
and  stupidity  in  the  judgment  of  a  “  discerning  public.”  It 
seems  presumptuous  in  us  to  dispute  Riehl’s  interpretation  of 
a  German  word,  but  we  must  think  that,  in  literature,  the 
epithet  Philister  has  usually  a  wider  meaning  than  this  — 
includes  his  definition  and  something  more.  We  imagine  the 
Philister  is  the  personification  of  the  spirit  which  judges 
everything  from  a  lower  point  of  view  than  the  subject  de¬ 
mands,  —  which  judges  the  affairs  of  the  parish  from  the  ego¬ 
tistic  or  purely  personal  point  of  view,  which  judges  the 
affairs  of  the  nation  from  the  parochial  point  of  view,  and 
does  not  hesitate  to  measure  the  merits  of  the  universe  from 
the  human  point  of  view.  At  least  this  must  surely  be  the 
spirit  to  which  Goethe  alludes  in  a  passage  cited  by  Riehl 
himself,  where  he  says  that  the  Germans  need  not  be  ashamed 
of  erecting  a  monument  to  him  as  well  as  to  Bliicher ;  for  if 
BlUcher  had  freed  them  from  the  French,  he  (Goethe)  had 
freed  them  from  the  nets  of  the  Philister :  — 

“  Ihr  mogt  mir  immer  ungescheut 
Gleich  Bliichern  Denkmal  setzen! 

Yon  Franzosen  hat  er  euch  befreit, 

Ich  von  Philister-netzen.” 

Goethe  could  hardly  claim  to  be  the  apostle  of  public  spirit ; 
but  he  is  eminently  the  man  who  helps  us  to  rise  to  a  lofty 
point  of  observation,  so  that  we  may  see  things  in  their  rela¬ 
tive  proportions. 

The  most  interesting  chapters  in  the  description  of  the 
Fourth  Estate,  which  concludes  the  volume,  are  those  on 
the  Aristocratic  Proletariat  and  the  Intellectual  Proleta¬ 
riat.  The  Fourth  Estate  in  Germany,  says  Riehl,  has  its 
centre  of  gravity  not,  as  in  England  and  France,  in  the  day« 


192 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


laborers  and  factory  operatives,  and  still  less  in  the  degen* 
erate  peasantry.  In  Germany,  the  educated  proletariat  is 
the  leaven  that  sets  the  mass  in  fermentation ;  the  dangerous 
classes  there  go  about,  not  in  blouses,  but  in  frock-coats  ; 
they  begin  with  the  impoverished  prince  and  end  in  the  hun¬ 
griest  litterateur.  The  custom  that  all  the  sons  of  a  noble¬ 
man  shall  inherit  their  father’s  title,  necessarily  goes  on 
multiplying  that  class  of  aristocrats  who  are  not  only  with¬ 
out  function  but  without  adequate  provision,  and  who  shrink 
from  entering  the  ranks  of  the  citizens  by  adopting  some 
honest  calling.  The  younger  son  of  a  prince,  says  Eiehl,  is 
usually  obliged  to  remain  without  any  vocation ;  and  however 
zealously  he  may  study  music,  painting,  literature,  or  science, 
he  can  never  be  a  regular  musician,  painter,  or  man  of  sci¬ 
ence  ;  his  pursuit  will  be  called  a  “  passion,”  not  a  “  calling,” 
and  to  the  end  of  his  days  he  remains  a  dilettante.  “  But 
the  ardent  pursuit  of  a  fixed  practical  calling  can  alone  sat¬ 
isfy  the  active  man.”  Direct  legislation  cannot  remedy  this 
evil.  The  inheritance  of  titles  by  younger  sons  is  the  uni¬ 
versal  custom,  and  custom  is  stronger  than  law.  But  if  all 
government  preference  for  the  “  aristocratic  proletariat  ”  were 
withdrawn,  the  sensible  men  among  them  would  prefer  emi¬ 
gration,  or  the  pursuit  of  some  profession,  to  the  hungry 
distinction  of  a  title  without  rents. 

The  intellectual  proletaires  Riehl  calls  the  “church  mili¬ 
tant  ”  of  the  Fourth  Estate  in  Germany.  In  no  other  coun¬ 
try  are  they  so  numerous ;  in  no  other  country  is  the  trade 
in  material  and  industrial  capital  so  far  exceeded  by  the 
wholesale  and  retail  trade,  the  traffic  and  the  usury,  in  the 
intellectual  capital  of  the  nation.  Germany  yields  more  intel¬ 
lectual  produce  than  it  can  use  and  pay  for. 

u  This  over-production,  which  is  not  transient  but  permanent,  nay, 
is  constantly  on  the  increase,  evidences  a  diseased  state  of  the  national 
industry,  a  perverted  application  of  industrial  powers,  and  is  a  far  more 
pungent  satire  on  the  national  condition  than  all  the  poverty  of  opera¬ 
tives  and  peasants.  .  .  .  Other  nations  need  not  envy  us  the  prepon¬ 
derance  of  the  intellectual  proletariat  over  the  proletaires  of  manual 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LIFE.  193 


fabor.  For  man  more  easily  becomes  diseased  from  over-study  than 
from  the  labor  of  the  hands ;  and  it  is  precisely  in  the  intellectual  pro¬ 
letariat  that  there  are  the  most  dangerous  seeds  of  disease.  This  is 
the  group  in  which  the  opposition  between  earnings  and  wants,  be¬ 
tween  the  ideal  social  position  and  the  real,  is  the  most  hopelessly 
irreconcilable.” 

We  must  unwillingly  leave  our  readers  to  make  acquaint¬ 
ance  for  themselves  with  the  graphic  details  with  which 
liiehl  follows  up  this  general  statement ;  but  before  quitting 
these  admirable  volumes,  let  us  say,  lest  our  inevitable  omis¬ 
sions  should  have  left  room  for  a  different  conclusion,  that 
Riehl’s  conservatism  is  not  in  the  least  tinged  with  the  par¬ 
tisanship  of  a  class,  with  a  poetic  fanaticism  for  the  past,  or 
with  the  prejudice  of  a  mind  incapable  of  discerning  the 
grander  evolution  of  things  to  which  all  social  forms  are  but 
temporarily  subservient.  It  is  the  conservatism  of  a  clear¬ 
eyed,  practical,  but  withal  large-minded  man  —  a  little  caus¬ 
tic,  perhaps,  now  and  then,  in  his  epigrams  on  democratic 
doctrinaires  who  have  their  nostrum  for  all  political  and 
social  diseases,  and  on  communistic  theories  which  he  regards 
as  “the  despair  of  the  individual  in  his  own  manhood,  re¬ 
duced  to  a  system,”  but  nevertheless  able  and  willing  to  do 
justice  to  the  elements  of  fact  and  reason  in  every  shade  of 
opinion  and  every  form  of  effort.  He  is  as  far  as  possible 
from  the  folly  of  supposing  that  the  sun  will  go  backward 
on  the  dial,  because  we  put  the  hands  of  our  clock  backward ; 
he  only  contends  against  the  opposite  folly  of  decreeing  that 
it  shall  be  mid-day,  while  in  fact  the  sun  is  only  just  touch¬ 
ing  the  mountain-tops,  and  all  along  the  valley  men  are  stum¬ 
bling  in  the  twilight. 


VOL.  IX 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


IT  was  between  three  and  four  o’clock  on  a  fine  morning 
in  August,  that  after  a  ten  hours’  journey  from  Frank¬ 
fort,  I  awoke  at  the  Weimar  station.  No  tipsiness  can  be 
more  dead  to  all  appeals  than  that  which  comes  from  fitful 
draughts  of  sleep  on  a  railway  journey  by  night.  To  the 
disgust  of  your  wakeful  companions,  you  are  totally  insen¬ 
sible  to  the  existence  of  your  umbrella,  and  to  the  fact  that 
your  carpet-bag  is  stowed  under  your  seat,  or  that  yon 
have  borrowed  books  and  tucked  them  behind  the  cushion. 
“  What ’s  the  odds,  so  long  as  one  can  sleep  ?”  is  your  philo¬ 
sophic  formula ;  and  it  is  not  until  you  have  begun  to  shiver 
on  the  platform  in  the  early  morning  air  that  you  become 
alive  to  property  and  its  duties,  —  that  is,  to  the  necessity  of 
keeping  a  fast  grip  upon  it.  Such  was  my  condition  when 
I  reached  the  station  at  Weimar.  The  ride  to  the  town 
thoroughly  roused  me,  all  the  more  because  the  glimpses  I 
caught  from  the  carriage  window  were  in  startling  contrast 
with  my  preconceptions.  The  lines  of  houses  looked  rough 
and  straggling,  and  were  often  interrupted  by  trees  peeping 
out  from  the  gardens  behind.  At  last  we  stopped  before  the 
Erbprinz,  an  inn  of  long  standing,  in  the  heart  of  the  town, 
and  were  ushered  along  heavy-looking  in-and-out  corridors, 
such  as  are  found  only  in  German  inns,  into  rooms  which 
overlooked  a  garden  just  like  one  you  may  see  at  the  back  of 
a  farmhouse  in  many  an  Engi:^h  village. 

A  walk  in  the  morning  in  search  of  lodgings  confirmed  the 
impression  that  Weimar  was  more  like  a  market-town  than 
the  precinct  of  a  court.  ‘‘And  this  is  the  Athens  of  the 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


195 


North !  ”  we  said.  Materially  speaking,  it  is  more  like 
Sparta.  The  blending  of  rustic  and  civic  life,  the  indica¬ 
tions  of  a  central  government  in  the  midst  of  very  primitive¬ 
looking  objects,  has  some  distant  analogy  with  the  condition 
of  old  Lacedaemon.  The  shops  are  most  of  them  such  as  you 
would  see  in  the  back  streets  of  an  English  provincial  town, 
and  the  commodities  on  sale  are  often  chalked  on  the  door¬ 
posts.  A  loud  rumbling  of  vehicles  may  indeed  be  heard 
now  and  then ;  but  the  rumbling  is  loud,  not  because  the 
vehicles  are  many,  but  because  the  springs  are  few.  The 
inhabitants  seemed  to  us  to  have  more  than  the  usual  heavi¬ 
ness  of  Germanity ;  even  their  stare  was  slow,  like  that  of 
herbivorous  quadrupeds.  We  set  out  with  the  intention  of 
exploring  the  town,  and  at  every  other  turn  we  came  into  a 
street  which  took  us  out  of  the  town,  or  else  into  one  that 
led  us  back  to  the  market  from  which  we  set  out.  One’s  first 
feeling  was,  How  could  Goethe  live  here  in  this  dull,  lifeless 
village  ?  The  reproaches  cast  on  him  for  his  worldliness  and 
attachment  to  court  splendor  seemed  ludicrous  enough ;  and 
it  was  inconceivable  that  the  stately  Jupiter,  in  a  frock-coat, 
so  familiar  to  us  all  through  Rauch’s  statuette,  could  have 
habitually  walked  along  these  rude  streets  and  among  these 
slouching  mortals.  Not  a  picturesque  bit  of  building  was  to 
be  seen  ;  there  was  no  quaintness,  nothing  to  remind  one  of 
historical  associations,  nothing  but  the  most  arid  prosaism. 

This  was  the  impression  produced  by  a  first  morning’s 
walk  in  Weimar,  —  an  impression  which  very  imperfectly 
represents  what  Weimar  is,  but  which  is  worth  recording, 
because  it  is  true  as  a  sort  of  back  view.  Our  ideas  were 
considerably  modified  when  in  the  evening  we  found  our  way 
to  the  Belvedei’e  chaussee ,  a  splendid  avenue  of  chestnut- 
trees,  two  miles  in  length,  reaching  from  the  town  to  the 
summer  residence  of  Belvedere  ;  when  we  saw  the  Schloss, 
and  discovered  the  labyrinthine  beauties  of  the  Park  ;  indeed, 
every  day  opened  to  us  fresh  charms  in  this  quiet  little  valley 
and  its  environs.  To  any  one  who  loves  Nature  in  her  gentle 
aspects,  who  delights  in  the  checkered  shade  on  a  summer 


196 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


morning,  and  in  a  walk  on  the  corn-clad  upland  at  sunset^ 
within  sight  of  a  little  town  nestled  among  the  trees  below, 
I  say  —  come  to  Weimar.  And  if  you  are  weary  of  English 
unrest,  of  that  society  of  “eels  in  a  jar,”  where  each  is  try¬ 
ing  to  get  his  head  above  the  other,  the  somewhat  stupid 
well-being  of  the  Weimarians  will  not  be  an  unwelcome  con¬ 
trast,  for  a  short  time  at  least.  If  you  care  nothing  about 
Goethe  and  Schiller  and  Herder  and  Wieland,  why,  so  much 
the  worse  for  you,  —  you  will  miss  many  interesting  thoughts 
and  associations;  still,  Weimar  has  a  charm  independent  of 
these  great  names. 

First  among  all  its  attractions  is  the  Park,  which  would  be 
remarkably  beautiful  even  among  English  parks ;  and  it  has 
one  advantage  over  all  these,  —  namely,  that  it  is  without  a 
fence.  It  runs  up  to  the  houses  and  far  out  into  the  corn¬ 
fields  and  meadows,  as  if  it  had  a  “  sweet  will  ”  of  its  own, 
like  a  river  or  a  lake,  and  had  not  been  planned  and  planted  b;y 
human  will.  Through  it  flows  the  Ilm,  — not  a  clear  stream, 
it  must  be  confessed,  but,  like  all  water,  as  Novalis  says,  “an 
eye  to  the  landscape.”  Before  we  came  to  Weimar  we  had 
had  dreams  of  boating  on  the  Ilm,  and  we  were  not  a  little 
amused  at  the  difference  between  this  vision  of  our  own  and 
the  reality.  A  few  water-fowl  are  the  only  navigators  of 
the  river ;  and  even  they  seem  to  confine  themselves  to  one 
spot,  as  if  they  were  there  purely  in  the  interest  of  the  pic¬ 
turesque.  The  real  extent  of  the  Park  is  small ;  but  the  walks 
are  so  ingeniously  arranged,  and  the  trees  are  so  luxuriant 
and  various,  that  it  takes  weeks  to  learn  the  turnings  and 
windings  by  heart,  so  as  no  longer  to  have  the  sense  of  nov¬ 
elty.  In  the  warm  weather  our  great  delight  was  the  walk 
which  follows  the  course  of  the  Ilm,  and  is  overarched  by 
tall  trees  with  patches  of  dark  moss  on  their  trunks,  in  rich 
contrast  with  the  transparent  green  of  the  delicate  leaves, 
through  which  the  golden  sunlight  played  and  checkered  the 
walk  before  us.  On  one  side  of  this  walk  the  rocky  ground 
rises  to  the  height  of  twenty  feet  or  more,  and  is  clothed 
with  mosses  and  rock-plants.  On  the  other  side  there  are. 


crOETIIii. 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


197 


every  now  and  then,  openings,  breaks  in  the  continuity  of 
shade,  which  show  you  a  piece  of  meadow-land  with  fine 
groups  of  trees ;  and  at  every  such  opening  a  seat  is  placed 
under  the  rock,  where  you  may  sit  and  chat  away  the  sunny 
hours,  or  listen  to  those  delicate  sounds  which  one  might 
fancy  came  from  tiny  bells  worn  on  the  garment  of  Silence 
to  make  us  aware  of  her  invisible  presence.  It  is  along  this 
walk  that  you  come  upon  a  truncated  column,  with  a  serpent 
twined  round  it,  devouring  cakes,  placed  on  the  column  as 
offerings,  a  bit  of  rude  sculpture  in  stone.  The  inscription 
—  Genio  loci  —  enlightens  the  learned  as  to  the  significance 
of  this  symbol ;  but  the  people  of  Weimar,  unedified  by  clas¬ 
sical  allusions,  have  explained  the  sculpture  by  a  story  which 
is  an  excellent  example  of  a  modern  myth.  Once  on  a  time, 
say  they,  a  huge  serpent  infested  the  Park,  and  evaded  all 
attempts  to  exterminate  him,  until  at  last  a  cunning  baker 
made  some  appetizing  cakes  which  contained  an  effectual 
poison,  and  placed  them  in  the  serpent’s  reach,  thus  meriting 
a  place  with  Hercules,  Theseus,  and  other  monster-slayers. 
Weimar,  in  gratitude,  erected  this  column  as  a  memorial  of 
the  baker’s  feat  and  its  own  deliverance.  A  little  farther  on 
is  the  Borkenhaus,  where  Carl  August  used  to  play  the  her¬ 
mit  for  days  together,  and  from  which  he  used  to  telegraph 
to  Goethe  in  his  Gartenhaus.  Sometimes  we  took  our  shady 
walk  in  the  Stern ,  the  oldest  part  of  the  Park  plantations,  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  river,  lingering  on  our  way  to  watch 
the  crystal  brook  which  hurries  on,  like  a  foolish  young 
maiden,  to  wed  itself  with  the  muddy  Ilm.  The  Stern 
(Star),  a  large  circular  opening  among  the  trees,  with  walks 
radiating  from  it,  has  been  thought  of  as  the  place  for  the 
projected  statues  of  Goethe  and  Schiller.  In  Rauch’s  model 
for  these  statues  the  poets  are  draped  in  togas,  Goethe,  who 
was  considerably  the  shorter  of  the  two,  resting  his  hand  on 
Schiller’s  shoulder ;  but  it  has  been  wisely  determined  to 
represent  them  in  their  “  habit  as  they  lived,”  so  Rauch’s 
design  is  rejected.  Against  classical  idealizing  in  portrait 
sculpture,  Weimar  has  already  a  sufficient  warning  in  the 


198 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


colossal  statue  of  Goethe,  executed  after  Bettina’s  design, 
which  the  readers  of  the  “Correspondence  with  a  Child” 
may  see  engraved  as  a  frontispiece  to  the  second  volume. 
This  statue  is  locked  up  in  an  odd  structure,  standing  in  the 
Park,  and  looking  like  a  compromise  between  a  church  and  a 
summer-house.  (Weimar  does  not  shine  in  its  buildings!) 
How  little  real  knowledge  of  Goethe  must  the  mind  have 
that  could  wish  to  see  him  represented  as  a  naked  Apollo, 
with  a  Psyche  at  his  knee  !  The  execution  is  as  feeble  as 
the  sentiment  is  false;  the  Apollo-Goethe  is  a  caricature, 
and  the  Psyche  is  simply  vulgar.  The  statue  was  executed 
under  Bettina’s  encouragement,  in  the  hope  that  it  would  be 
bought  by  the  King  of  Prussia;  but  a  breach  having  taken 
place  between  her  and  her  royal  friend,  a  purchaser  was 
sought  in  the  Grand  Duke  of  Weimar,  who,  after  transport¬ 
ing  it  at  enormous  expense  from  Italy,  wisely  shut  it  up 
where  it  is  seen  only  by  the  curious. 

As  autumn  advanced  and  the  sunshine  became  precious, 
we  preferred  the  broad  walk  on  the  higher  grounds  of  the 
Park,  where  the  masses  of  trees  are  finely  disposed,  leaving 
wide  spaces  of  meadow  which  extend  on  one  side  to  the 
Belvedere  allee  with  its  avenue  of  chestnut-trees,  and  on  the 
other  to  the  little  cliffs  which  I  have  already  described  as 
forming  a  wall  by  the  walk  along  the  11m.  Exquisitely 
beautiful  were  the  graceful  forms  of  the  plane-trees,  thrown 
in  golden  relief  on  a  background  of  dark  pines.  Here  we 
used  to  turn  and  turn  again  in  the  autumn  afternoons,  at 
first  bright  and  warm,  then  sombre  with  low-lying  purple 
clouds,  and  chill  with  winds  that  sent  the  leaves  raining 
from  the  branches.  The  eye  here  welcomes,  as  a  contrast, 
the  white  fagade  of  a  building  looking  like  a  small  Greek 
temple,  placed  on  the  edge  of  a  cliff,  and  you  at  once  con¬ 
clude  it  to  be  a  bit  of  pure  ornament,  a  device  to  set  off  the 
landscape ;  but  you  presently  see  a  porter  seated  near  the 
door  of  the  basement  story,  beguiling  the  ennui  of  his  sine¬ 
cure  by  a  book  and  a  pipe,  and  you  learn  with  surprise  that 
this  is  another  retreat  for  ducal  dignity  to  unbend  and 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


199 


philosophize  in.  Singularly  ill-adapted  to  such  a  purpose  it 
seems  to  beings  not  ducal.  On  the  other  side  of  the  Ilm  the 
Park  is  bordered  by  the  road  leading  to  the  little  village  of 
Ober  Weimar,  —  another  sunny  walk,  which  has  the  special 
attraction  of  taking  one  by  Goethe’s  Garten haus,  his  first 
residence  at  Weimar.  Inside,  this  Gartenhaus  is  a  homely 
sort  of  cottage,  such  as  many  an  English  nobleman’s  gardener 
lives  in ;  no  furniture  is  left  in  it,  and  the  family  wish  to 
sell  it.  Outside,  its  aspect  became  to  us  like  that  of  a  dear 
friend,  whose  irregular  features  and  rusty  clothes  have  a 
peculiar  charm.  It  stands,  with  its  bit  of  garden  and  orchard, 
on  a  pleasant  slope,  fronting  the  west ;  before  it  the  Park 
stretches  one  of  its  meadowy  openings  to  the  trees  which 
fringe  the  Ilm,  and  between  this  meadow  and  the  garden 
hedge  lies  the  said  road  to  Ober  Weimar.  A  grove  of  weep¬ 
ing  birches  sometimes  tempted  us  to  turn  out  of  this  road 
up  to  the  fields  at  the  top  of  the  slope,  on  which  not  only 
the  Gartenhaus,  but  several  other  modest  villas  are  placed. 
From  this  little  height  one  sees  to  advantage  the  plantations 
of  the  Park  in  their  autumnal  coloring ;  the  town,  with  its 
steep-roofed  church,  and  castle  clock-tower,  painted  a  gay 
green  ;  the  bushy  line  of  the  Belvedere  chaussee,  and  Belve¬ 
dere  itself  peeping  on  an  eminence  from  its  nest  of  trees. 
Here,  too,  was  the  place  for  seeing  a  lovely  sunset,  —  such  a 
sunset  as  September  sometimes  gives  us,  when  the  western 
horizon  is  like  a  rippled  sea  of  gold,  sending  over  the  whole 
hemisphere  golden  vapors,  which,  as  they  near  the  east,  are 
subdued  to  a  deep  rose-color. 

The  Schloss  is  rather  a  stately,  ducal-looking  building, 
forming  three  sides  of  a  quadrangle.  Strangers  are  admitted 
to  see  a  suite  of  rooms  called  the  Dichter-Zimmer  (Poet’s 
Rooms),  dedicated  to  Goethe,  Schiller,  and  Wieland.  The 
idea  of  these  rooms  is  really  a  pretty  one :  in  each  of  them 
there  is  a  bust  of  the  poet  who  is  its  presiding  genius,  and 
the  walls  of  the  Schiller  and  Goethe  rooms  are  covered  with 
frescos  representing  scenes  from  their  works.  The  Wieland 
room  is  much  smaller  than  the  other  two,  and  serves  as  an 


200 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


antechamber  to  them ;  it  is  also  decorated  more  sparingly, 
but  the  arabesques  on  the  walls  are  very  tastefully  designed, 
and  satisfy  one  better  than  the  ambitious  compositions  from 
Goethe  and  Schiller. 

A  more  interesting  place  to  visitors  is  the  library,  which 
occupies  a  large  building  not  far  from  the  Schloss.  The 
principal  Saal,  surrounded  by  a  broad  gallery,  is  ornamented 
with  some  very  excellent  busts  and  some  very  bad  portraits. 
Of  the  busts,  the  most  remarkable  is  that  of  Gluck,  by 
Houdon,  —  a  striking  specimen  of  the  real  in  art.  The  sculp¬ 
tor  has  given  every  scar  made  by  the  small-pox ;  he  has  left 
the  nose  as  pug  and  insignificant,  and  the  mouth  as  common, 
as  Nature  made  them  ;  but  then  he  has  done  what,  doubtless, 
Nature  also  did,  —  he  has  spread  over  those  coarsely  cut  feat¬ 
ures  the  irradiation  of  genius.  A  specimen  of  the  opposite 
style  in  art  is  Trippel’s  bust  of  Goethe  as  the  young  Apollo, 
also  fine  in  its  way.  It  was  taken  when  Goethe  was  in  Italy ; 
and  in  the  “  Italianische  Reise,”  mentioning  the  progress  of 
the  bust,  he  says  that  he  sees  little  likeness  to  himself,  but 
is  not  discontented  that  he  should  go  forth  to  the  world  as 
such  a  good-looking  fellow,  —  hubscher  Bursch.  This  bust, 
however,  is  a  frank  idealization ;  when  an  artist  tells  us  that 
the  ideal  of  a  Greek  god  divides  his  attention  with  his  imme¬ 
diate  subject,  we  are  warned.  But  one  gets  rather  irritated 
with  idealization  in  portrait  when,  as  in  Dannecker’s  bust  of 
Schiller,  one  has  been  misled  into  supposing  that  Schiller’s 
brow  was  square  and  massive,  while,  in  fact,  it  was  receding. 
We  say  this  partly  on  the  evidence  of  his  skull,  a  cast  of 
which  is  kept  in  the  library,  so  that  we  could  place  it  in  jux¬ 
taposition  with  the  bust.  The  story  of  this  skull  is  curious. 
When  it  was  determined  to  disinter  Schiller’s  remains,  that 
they  might  repose  in  company  with  those  of  Carl  August  and 
Goethe,  the  question  of  identification  was  found  to  be  a  diffi¬ 
cult  one,  for  his  bones  were  mingled  with  those  of  ten  insig¬ 
nificant  fellow-mortals.  When,  however,  the  eleven  skulls 
were  placed  in  juxtaposition,  a  large  number  of  persons  who 
had  known  Schiller  separately  and  successively  fixed  upon 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


201 


the  same  skull  as  liis,  and  their  evidence  was  clenched  by 
the  discovery  that  the  teeth  of  this  skull  corresponded  to  the 
statement  of  Schiller’s  servant,  that  his  master  had  lost  no 
teeth,  except  one,  which  he  specified.  Accordingly  it  was 
decided  that  this  was  Schiller’s  skull,  and  the  comparative 
anatomist  Loder  was  sent  for  from  Jena  to  select  the  bones 
which  completed  the  skeleton.1  The  evidence  certainly  leaves 
room  for  a  doubt;  but  the  receding  forehead  of  the  skull 
agrees  with  the  testimony  of  persons  who  knew  Schiller,  that 
he  had,  as  Rauch  said  to  us,  a  “  miserable  forehead ;  ”  it 
agrees,  also,  with  a  beautiful  miniature  of  Schiller,  taken 
when  he  was  about  twenty.  This  miniature  is  deeply  inter¬ 
esting  ;  it  shows  us  a  youth  whose  clearly  cut  features,  with 
the  mingled  fire  and  melancholy  of  their  expression,  could 
hardly  have  been  passed  with  indifference ;  it  has  the  langer 
Gansehals  (long  goose-neck)  which  he  gives  to  his  Karl 
Moor;  but  instead  of  the  black,  sparkling  eyes,  and  the 
gloomy,  overhanging,  bushy  eyebrows  he  chose  for  his  robber 
hero,  it  has  the  fine  wavy  auburn  locks  and  the  light-blue 
eyes  which  belong  to  our  idea  of  pure  German  race.  We 
may  be  satisfied  that  we  know  at  least  the  form  of  Schiller’s 
features,  for  in  this  particular  his  busts  and  portraits  are  in 
striking  accordance;  unlike  the  busts  and  portraits  of  Goethe, 
which  are  a  proof,  if  any  were  wanted,  how  inevitably  sub¬ 
jective  art  is,  even  when  it  professes  to  be  purely  imitative, 
—  how  the  most  active  perception  gives  us  rather  a  reflex  of 
what  we  think  and  feel,  than  the  real  sum  of  objects  before 
us.  The  Goethe  of  Rauch  or  of  Schwanthaler  is  widely  dif¬ 
ferent  in  form,  as  well  as  expression,  from  the  Goethe  of 
Stieler ;  and  Winterberger,  the  actor,  who  knew  Goethe  inti¬ 
mately,  told  us  that  to  him  not  one  of  all  the  likenesses, 
sculptured  or  painted,  seemed  to  have  more  than  a  faint 
resemblance  to  their  original.  There  is,  indeed,  one  likeness, 
taken  in  his  old  age,  and  preserved  in  the  library,  which  is 

1  I  tell  this  story  from  my  recollection  of  Stahr’s  account  in  his  “  Weimar 
und  Jena,”  an  account  which  was  confirmed  to  me  by  residents  in  Weimar; 
but  as  I  have  not  the  book  by  me,  I  cannot  test  the  accuracy  of  my  memory 


202 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


startling  from  the  conviction  it  produces  of  close  resemblance, 
and  Winter berger  admitted  it  to  be  the  best  he  had  seen. 
It  is  a  tiny  miniature  painted  on  a  small  cup,  of  Dresden 
china,  and  is  so  wonderfully  executed  that  a  magnifying-glass 
exhibits  the  perfection  of  its  texture  as  if  it  were  a  flower  or 
a  butterfly’s  wing.  It  is  more  like  Stieler’s  portrait  than  any 
other ;  the  massive  neck,  unbent  though  withered,  rises  out 
of  his  dressing-gown,  and  supports  majestically  a  head  from 
which  one  might  imagine  (though,  alas  !  it  never  is  so  in 
reality)  that  the  discipline  of  seventy  years  had  purged  away 
all  meaner  elements  than  those  of  the  sage  and  the  poet,  — 
a  head  which  might  serve  as  a  type  of  sublime  old  age. 
Among  the  collection  of  toys  and  trash,  melancholy  records 
of  the  late  Grand  Duke’s  eccentricity,  which  occupy  the 
upper  rooms  of  the  library,  there  are  some  precious  relics 
hanging  together  in  a  glass  case,  which  almost  betray  one 
into  sympathy  with  “  holy  coat  ”  worship.  They  are  — ■ 
Luther’s  gown,  the  coat  in  which  Gustavus  Adolphus  was 
shot,  and  Goethe’s  court  coat  and  Schlafrock.  What  a  rush 
of  thoughts  from  the  mingled  memories  of  the  passionate 
reformer,  the  heroic  warrior,  and  the  wise  singer ! 

The  only  one  of  its  great  men  to  whom  Weimar  has  at 
present  erected  a  statue  in  the  open  air  is  Herder.  His 
statue,  erected  in  1850,  stands  in  what  is  called  the  Herder 
Platz,  with  its  back  to  the  church  in  which  he  preached ;  in 
the  right  hand  is  a  roll  bearing  his  favorite  motto,  Licht , 
Liebe,  Leben  (Light,  Love,  Life),  and  on  the  pedestal  is  the 
inscription  Von  Deutschen  aller  Lander  (from  Germans  of 
all  lands).  This  statue,  which  is  by  Schaller  of  Munich,  is 
very  much  admired  ;  but,  remembering  the  immortal  descrip¬ 
tion  in  the  “Dichtung  und  Wahrheit,”  of  Herder’s  appear¬ 
ance  when  Goethe  saw  him  for  the  first  time  at  Strasburg,  I 
was  disappointed  with  the  parsonic  appearance  of  the  statu ?, 
as  well  as  of  the  bust  in  the  library.  The  part  of  the  town 
which  imprints  itself  on  the  memory,  next  to  the  Herder 
Platz,  is  the  Markt,  a  cheerful  square  made  smart  by  a  new 
Rath-haus.  Twice  a  week  it  is  crowded  with  stalls  and 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


208 


country  people ;  and  it  is  the  very  pretty  custom  for  the 
band  to  play  in  the  balcony  of  the  Rath-haus  about  twenty 
minutes  every  market-day  to  delight  the  ears  of  the  peas¬ 
antry.  A  head-dress  worn  by  many  of  the  old  women,  and 
here  and  there  by  a  young  one,  is,  I  think,  peculiar  to 
Thuringia.  Let  the  fair  reader  imagine  half  a  dozen  of  her 
broadest  French  sashes  dyed  black,  and  attached  as  streamers 
to  the  back  of  a  stiff  black  skull-cap,  ornamented  in  front 
with  a  large  bow,  which  stands  out  like  a  pair  of  donkey’s 
ears  ;  let  her  further  imagine,  mingled  with  the  streamers  of 
ribbon,  equally  broad  pendants  of  a  thick  woollen  texture, 
something  like  the  fringe  of  an  urn-rug,  and  she  will  have 
an  idea  of  the  head-dress  in  which  I  have  seen  a  Thuringian 
damsel  figure  on  a  hot  summer’s  day.  Two  houses  in  the 
Markt  are  pointed  out  as  those  from  which  Tetzel  published 
his  indulgences  and  Luther  thundered  against  them ;  but 
it  is  difficult  to  one’s  imagination  to  conjure  up  scenes 
of  theological  controversy  in  Weimar,  where,  from  princes 
down  to  pastry-cooks,  rationalism  is  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course. 

Passing  along  the  Schiller-strasse,  a  broad,  pleasant  street, 
one  is  thrilled  by  the  inscription,  Hier  wohnte  Schiller ,  over 
the  door  of  a  small  house  with  casts  in  its  bow-window. 
Mount  up  to  the  second  story,  and  you  will  see  Schiller’s 
study  very  nearly  as  it  was  when  he  worked  in  it.  It  is  a 
cheerful  room  with  three  windows,  two  towards  the  street 
and  one  looking  on  a  little  garden  which  divides  his  house 
from  the  neighboring  one.  The  writing-table,  which  he  notes 
as  an  important  purchase  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Korner,  and 
in  one  of  the  drawers  of  which  he  used  to  keep  rotten  apples 
for  the  sake  of  their  scent,  stands  near  the  last-named  win¬ 
dow,  so  that  its  light  would  fall  on  his  left  hand.  On  another 
side  of  the  room  is  his  piano,  with  his  guitar  lying  upon  it ; 
and  above  these  hangs  an  ugly  print  of  an  Italian  scene, 
which  has  a  companion  equally  ugly  on  another  wall. 
Strange  feelings  it  awakened  in  me  to  run  my  fingers  over 
the  keys  of  the  little  piano  and  call  forth  its  tones,  now  so 


204 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


queer  and  feeble,  like  those  of  an  invalided  old  woman  whose 
voice  could  once  make  a  heart  beat  with  fond  passion  or 
soothe  its  angry  pulses  into  calm.  The  bedstead  on  which 
Schiller  died  has  been  removed  into  the  study,  from  the  small 
bedroom  behind,  which  is  now  empty.  A  little  table  is  placed 
close  to  the  head  of  the  bed,  with  his  drinking-glass  upon  it, 
and  on  the  wall  above  the  bedstead  there  is  a  beautiful  sketch 
of  him  lying  dead.  He  used  to  occupy  the  whole  of  the 
second  floor.  It  contains,  besides  the  study  and  bedroom,  an 
antechamber,  now  furnished  with  casts  and  prints  on  sale,  in 
order  to  remunerate  the  custodiers  of  the  house,  and  a  salon 
tricked  out,  since  his  death,  with  a  symbolical  cornice,  statues, 
and  a  carpet  worked  by  the  ladies  of  Weimar. 

Goethe’s  house  is  much  more  important-looking,  but,  to 
English  eyes,  far  from  being  the  palatial  residence  which 
might  be  expected,  from  the  descriptions  of  German  writers. 
The  entrance  hall  is  indeed  rather  imposing,  with  its  statues 
in  niches,  and  its  broad  staircase,  but  the  rest  of  the  house  is 
not  proportionately  spacious  and  elegant.  The  only  part  of 
the  house  open  to  the  public  —  and  this  only  on  a  Friday  — 
is  the  principal  suite  of  rooms  which  contain  his  collection 
of  casts,  pictures,  cameos,  etc.  This  collection  is  utterly  in¬ 
significant,  except  as  having  belonged  to  him  ;  and  one  turns 
away  from  bad  pictures  and  familiar  casts,  to  linger  over  the 
manuscript  of  the  wonderful  “Romische  Elegein,”  written  by 
h»mself  in  the  Italian  character.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that 
a  large  sum  offered  for  this  house  by  the  German  Diet  was 
refused  by  the  Goethe  family,  in  the  hope,  it  is  said,  of  ob¬ 
taining  a  still  larger  sum  from  that  mythical  English  Croesus 
always  ready  to  turn  fabulous  sums  into  dead  capital,  who 
haunts  the  imagination  of  Continental  people.  One  of  the 
most  fitting  tributes  a  nation  can  pay  to  its  great  dead  is  to 
make  their  habitation,  like  their  works,  a  public  possession, — • 
a  shrine  where  affectionate  reverence  may  be  more  vividly 
reminded  that  the  being  who  has  bequeathed  to  us  immortal 
thoughts  or  immortal  deeds  had  to  endure  the  daily  struggle 
with  the  petty  details,  perhaps  with  the  sordid  cares  of  this 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


205 


working-day  world ;  and  it  is  a  sad  pity  that  Goethe’s  study, 
bedroom,  and  library,  so  fitted  to  call  up  that  kind  of  sym¬ 
pathy,  because  they  are  preserved  just  as  he  left  them,  should 
be  shut  out  from  all  but  the  specially  privileged.  We  were 
happy  enough  to  be  among  these,  to  look  through  the  mist 
of  rising  tears  at  the  dull  study  with  its  two  small  windows, 
and  without  a  single  object  chosen  for  the  sake  of  luxury  or 
beauty;  at  the  dark  little  bedroom  with  the  bed  on  which  he 
died,  and  the  arm-chair  where  he  took  his  morning  coffee  as 
he  read ;  at  the  library  with  its  common  deal  shelves,  and 
books  containing  his  own  paper-marks.  In  the  presence  of 
this  hardy  simplicity,  the  contrast  suggests  itself  of  the  study 
at  Abbotsford,  with  its  elegant  Gothic  fittings,  its  delicious 
easy -chair,  and  its  oratory  of  painted  glass. 

We  were  very  much  amused  at  the  privacy  with  which 
people  keep  their  shops  at  Weimar.  Some  of  them  have  not 
so  much  as  their  names  written  up ;  and  there  is  so  much 
indifference  of  manner  towards  customers  that  one  might 
suppose  every  shopkeeper  was  a  salaried  functionary  em¬ 
ployed  by  government.  The  distribution  of  commodities, 
too,  is  carried  on  according  to  a  peculiar  Weimarian  logic; 
we  bought  our  lemons  at  a  ropemaker’s,  and  should  not  have 
felt  ourselves  very  unreasonable  if  we  had  asked  for  shoes  at 
a  stationer’s.  As  to  competition,  I  should  think  a  clever 
tradesman  or  artificer  is  almost  as  free  from  it  at  Weimar 
as  iEsculapius  or  Vulcan  in  the  days  of  old  Olympus.  Here 
is  an  illustration.  Our  landlady’s  husband  was  called  the 
“siisser  Rabenhorst,”  by  way  of  distinguishing  him  from  a 
brother  of  his  who  was  the  reverse  of  sweet.  This  Raben¬ 
horst,  who  was  not  sweet,  but  who  nevertheless  dealt  in 
sweets,  for  he  was  a  confectioner,  was  so  utter  a  rogue  that 
any  transaction  with  him  was  avoided  almost  as  much  as  if 
he  had  been  the  Evil  One  himself,  yet  so  clever  a  rogue  that 
he  always  managed  to  keep  on  the  windy  side  of  the  law. 
Nevertheless,  he  had  so  many  dainties  in  the  confectionery 
line  —  so  viel  Sussigkcitenund  Leckerbissen  —  that  people  bent 
on  giving  a  fine  entertainment  were  at  last  constrained  to 


206 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


say,  “  After  all,  I  must  go  to  Rabenhorst ;  ”  and  so  he  got 
abundant  custom,  in  spite  of  general  detestation. 

A  very  fair  dinner  is  to  be  had  at  several  tables  d'hote  in 
Weimar  for  ten  or  twelve  groschen  (a  shilling  or  fifteen 
pence).  The  Germans  certainly  excel  us  in  their  Mehlspeise, 
or  farinaceous  puddings,  and  in  their  mode  of  cooking  vege¬ 
tables  ;  they  are  bolder  and  more  imaginative  in  their  combi¬ 
nation  of  sauces,  fruits,  and  vegetables  with  animal  food,  and 
they  are  faithful  to  at  least  one  principle  of  dietetics,  — 
variety.  The  only  thing  at  table  we  have  any  pretext  for 
being  supercilious  about  is  the  quality  and  dressing  of  animal 
food.  The  meat  at  a  table  d'hote  in  Thuringia,  and  even 
Berlin,  except  in  the  very  first  hotels,  bears  about  the  same 
relation  to  ours  as  horse-flesh  probably  bears  to  German  beef 
and  mutton ;  and  an  Englishman  with  a  bandage  over  his 
eyes  would  often  be  sorely  puzzled  to  guess  the  kind  of  flesh 
he  was  eating.  For  example,  the  only  flavor  we  could  ever 
discern  in  hare,  which  is  a  very  frequent  dish,  was  that  of 
the  more  or  less  disagreeable  fat  which  predominated  in  the 
dressing ;  and  roast  meat  seems  to  be  considered  an  extrava¬ 
gance  rarely  admissible.  A  melancholy  sight;  is  a  flock  of 
Weimarian  sheep,  followed  or  led  by  their  shepherd.  They 
are  as  dingy  as  London  sheep,  and  far  more  skinny ;  indeed, 
an  Englishman  who  dined  with  us  said  the  sight  of  the  sheep 
had  set  him  against  mutton.  Still,  the  variety  of  dishes  you 
get  for  ten  groschen  is  something  marvellous  to  those  who 
have  been  accustomed  to  English  charges  ;  and  among  the  six 
courses  it  is  not  a  great  evil  to  find  a  dish  or  two  the  reverse 
of  appetizing.  I  suppose,  however,  that  the  living  at  tables 
d'hote  gives  one  no  correct  idea  of  the  mode  in  which  the 
people  live  at  home.  The  basis  of  the  national  food  seems 
to  be  raw  ham  and  sausage,  with  a  copious  superstratum  of 
Blaukraut,  Sauerkraut ,  and  black  bread.  Sausage  seems  to 
be  to  the  German  what  potatoes  were  to  the  Irish,  —  the  sine 
qua  non  of  bodily  sustenance.  Goethe  asks  the  Frau  von 
Stein  to  send  him  so  eine  Wurst  when  he  wants  to  have  a 
make-shift  dinner  away  from  home ;  and  in  his  letters  to 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


207 


Kestner  he  is  enthusiastic  about  the  delights  of  dining  ou 
Blaukraut  and  Leberwurst  (blue  cabbage  and  liver  sausage). 
If  Kraut  and  Wurst  may  be  called  the  solid  prose  of  Thurin- 
gian  diet,  fish  and  Kuchen  (generally  a  heavy  kind  of  fruit  tart) 
are  the  poetry  :  the  German  appetite  disports  itself  with  these 
as  the  English  appetite  does  with  ices  and  whipped  creams. 

At  the  beginning  of  August,  when  we  arrived  in  Weimar, 
almost  every  one  was  away  —  “at  the  Baths,”  of  course  — 
except  the  tradespeople.  As  birds  nidify  in  the  spring,  so 
Germans  wash  themselves  in  the  summer  :  their  Waschung- 
strieb  acts  strongly  only  at  a  particular  time  of  the  year ; 
during  all  the  rest,  apparently,  a  decanter  and  a  sugar-basin 
or  pie-dish  are  an  ample  toilet-service  for  them.  We  were 
quite  contented,  however,  that  it  was  not  yet  the  Weimar 
“season,”  fashionably  speaking,  since  it  was  the  very  best 
time  for  enjoying  something  far  better  than  Weimar  gayeties, 
—  the  lovely  Park  and  environs.  It  was  pleasant,  too,  to  see 
the  good  bovine  citizens  enjoying  life  in  their  quiet  fashion. 
Unlike  our  English  people,  they  take  pleasure  into  their  cal¬ 
culations,  and  seem  regularly  to  set  aside  part  of  their  time 
for  recreation.  It  is  understood  that  something  is  to  be  done 
in  life  besides  business  and  housewifery :  the  women  take 
their  children  and  their  knitting  to  the  Erholung ,  or  walk 
with  their  husbands  to  Belvedere,  or  in  some  other  direction 
where  a  cup  of  coffee  is  to  be  had.  The  Erholung ,  by  the 
way,  is  a  pretty  garden,  with  shady  walks,  abundant  seats, 
an  orchestra,  a  ball-room,  and  a  place  for  refreshments.  The 
higher  classes  are  subscribers  and  visitors  here  as  well  as  the 
bourgeoisie ;  but  there  are  several  resorts  of  a  similar  kind 
frequented  by  the  latter  exclusively.  The  reader  of  Goethe 
will  remember  his  little  poem,  “Die  Lustigen  von  Weimar,” 
which  still  indicates  the  round  of  amusements  in  this  simple 
capital :  the  walk  to  Belvedere  or  Tiefurt ;  the  excursion  to 
Jena,  or  some  other  trip,  not  made  expensive  by  distance; 
the  round  game  at  cards  ;  the  dance ;  the  theatre ;  and  so 
many  other  enjoyments  to  be  had  by  a  people  not  bound  to 
give  dinner-parties  and  “  keep  up  a  position.” 


208 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


It  is  charming  to  see  how  real  an  amusement  the  theatre 
is  to  the  Weimar  people.  The  greater  number  of  places  are 
occupied  oy  subscribers,  and  there  is  no  fuss  about  toilet  or 
escort.  The  ladies  come  alone,  and  Sxip  quietly  into  their 
places  without  need  of  “  protection,”  —  a  proof  of  civilization 
perhaps  more  than  equivalent  to  our  pre-eminence  in  patent 
locks  and  carriage  springs ;  and  after  the  performance  is 
over  you  may  see  the  same  ladies  following  their  servants, 
with  lanterns,  through  streets  innocent  of  gas,  in  which  an 
oil-lamp,  suspended  from  a  rope  slung  across  from  house  to 
house,  occasionally  reveals  to  you  the  shafts  of  a  cart  or 
omnibus,  conveniently  placed  for  you  to  run  upon  them. 

A  yearly  autumn  festival  at  Weimar  is  the  Vogelschiessen , 
or  Bird-shooting ;  but  the  reader  must  not  let  his  imagination 
wander  at  this  word  into  fields  and  brakes.  The  bird  here 
concerned  is  of  wood,  and  the  shooters,  instead  of  wandering 
over  breezy  down  and  common,  are  shut  up,  day  after  day, 
in  a  room  clouded  with  tobacco-smoke,  that  they  may  take 
their  turn  at  shooting  with  the  rifle  from  the  window  of  a 
closet  about  the  size  of  a  sentinel’s  box.  However,  this  is 
a  mighty  enjoyment  to  the  Thuringian  yeomanry,  and  an 
occasion  of  profit  to  our  friend  Punch,  and  other  itinerant 
performers ;  for  while  the  Vogelschiessen  lasts,  a  sort  of  fair 
is  held  in  the  field  where  the  marksmen  assemble. 

Among  the  quieter  every-day  pleasures  of  the  Weimarians, 
perhaps  the  most  delightful  is  the  stroll  on  a  bright  afternoon 
or  evening  to  the  Duke’s  summer  residence  of  Belvedere, 
about  two  miles  from  Weimar.  As  I  have  said,  a  glorious 
avenue  of  chestnut-trees  leads  all  the  way  from  the  town  to 
the  entrance  of  the  grounds,  which  are  open  to  all  the  world 
as  much  as  to  the  Duke  himself.  Close  to  the  palace  and  its 
subsidiary  buildings  there  is  an  inn,  for  the  accommodation 
of  the  good  people  who  come  to  take  dinner  or  any  other 
meal  here,  by  way  of  holiday-making.  A  sort  of  pavilion 
stands  on  a  spot  commanding  a  lovely  view  of  Weimar  and 
its  valley,  and  here  the  Weimarians  constantly  come  on  sum¬ 
mer  and  autumn  evenings  to  smoke  a  cigar  or  drink  a  cup  of 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


209 


coffee.  In  one  wing  of  tlie  little  palace,  which  is  made  smart, 
by  wooden  cupolas,  with  gilt  pinnacles,  there  is  a  saloon, 
which  I  recommend  to  the  imitation  of  tasteful  people  in 
their  country-houses.  It  has  no  decoration  but  that  of  natu¬ 
ral  foliage :  ivy  is  trained  at  regular  intervals  up  the  pure 
white  walls,  and  all  round  the  edge  of  the  ceiling,  so  as  to 
form  pilasters  and  a  cornice ;  ivy  again,  trained  on  trellis- 
work,  forms  a  blind  to  the  window,  which  looks  towards  the 
entrance  court ;  and  beautiful  ferns,  arranged  in  tall  baskets, 
are  placed  here  and  there  against  the  walls.  The  furniture 
is  of  light  cane-work.  Another  pretty  thing  here  is  the 
Natur-Theater,  —  a  theatre  constructed  with  living  trees, 
trimmed  into  walls  and  side  scenes.  We  pleased  ourselves 
for  a  little  while  with  thinking  that  this  was  one  of  the 
places  where  Goethe  acted  in  his  own  dramas,  but  we  after¬ 
wards  learned  that  it  was  not  made  until  his  acting  days 
were  over.  The  inexhaustible  charm  of  Belvedere,  however, 
is  the  grounds,  which  are  laid  out  with  a  taste  worthy  of  a 
first-rate  landscape-gardener.  The  tall  and  graceful  limes, 
plane-trees,  and  weeping  birches,  the  little  basins  of  water 
here  and  there,  with  fountains  playing  in  the  middle  of  them, 
and  with  a  fringe  of  broad-leaved  plants,  or  other  tasteful 
bordering  round  them,  the  gradual  descent  towards  the  river, 
and  the  hill  clothed  with  firs  and  pines  on  the  opposite  side, 
forming  a  fine  dark  background  for  the  various  and  light 
foliage  of  the  trees  that  ornament  the  gardens,  —  all  this  we 
went  again  and  again  co  enjoy,  from  the  time  when  every¬ 
thing  was  of  a  vivid  green  until  the  Virginian  creepers  which 
festooned  the  silver  stems  of  the  birches  were  bright  scarlet, 
and  the  touch  of  autumn  had  turned  all  the  green  to  gold. 
One  of  the  spots  to  linger  in  is  at  a  semicircular  seat  against 
an  artificial  rock,  on  which  are  placed  large  glass  globes  of 
different  colors.  It  is  wonderful  to  see  with  what  minute 
perfection  the  scenery  around  is.  painted  in  these  globes. 
Each  is  like  a  pre-Raphaelite  picture,  with  every  little  detail 
of  gravelly  walk,  mossy  bank,  and  delicately  leaved,  inter* 
lacing  boughs  presented  in  accurate  miniature. 


VOL.  IX. 


210 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


In  the  opposite  direction  to  Belvedere  lies  Tiefurt,  with  its 
small  park  and  tiny  chateau,  formerly  the  residence  of  the 
Duchess  Amalia,  the  mother  of  Carl  August,  and  the  friend 
and  patroness  of  Wieland,  but  now  apparently  serving  as 
little  else  than  a  receptacle  for  the  late  Duke  Carl  Friedrich’s 
rather  childish  collections.  In  the  second  story  there  is  a 
suite  of  rooms,  so  small  that  the  largest  of  them  does  not 
take  up  as  much  space  as  a  good  dining-table,  and  each  of 
these  doll-house  rooms  is  crowded  with  prints,  old  china,  and 
all  sorts  of  knick-knacks  and  rococo  wares.  The  park  is  a 
little  paradise.  The  Ilm  is  seen  here  to  the  best  advantage : 
it  is  clearer  than  at  Weimar,  and  winds  about  gracefully 
between  the  banks,  on  one  side  steep,  and  curtained  with 
turf  and  shrubs,  or  fine  trees.  It  was  here,  at  a  point  where 
the  bank  forms  a  promontory  into  the  river,  that  Goethe  and 
his  Court  friends  got  up  the  performance  of  an  operetta,  “  Die 
Fischerin,”  by  torchlight.  On  the  way  to  Tiefurt  lies  the 
Webiclit,  a  beautiful  wood,  through  which  run  excellent 
carriage-roads  and  grassy  footpaths.  It  was  a  rich  enjoy¬ 
ment  to  skirt  this  wood  along  the  Jena  road,  and  see  the  sky 
arching  grandly  down  over  the  open  fields  on  the  other  side 
of  us,  the  evening  red  flushing  the  west  over  the  town,  and 
the  stars  coming  out  as  if  to  relieve  the  sun  in  its  watch ;  or 
to  take  the  winding  road  through  the  wood,  under  its  tall, 
overarching  trees,  now  bending  their  mossy  trunks  forward, 
now  standing  with  the  stately  erectness  of  lofty  pillars ;  or 
to  saunter  along  the  grassy  footpaths  where  the  sunlight- 
streamed  through  the  fairy-like  foliage  of  the  silvery-barked 
birches. 

Stout  pedestrians  who  go  to  Weimar  will  do  well  to  make 
a  walking  excursion,  as  we  did,  to  Ettersburg,  a  more  distant 
summer  residence  of  the  Grand  Duke,  interesting  to  us  before¬ 
hand  as  the  scene  of  private  theatricals  and  sprees  in  the 
Goethe  days.  We  set  out  on  one  of  the  brightest  and  hottest 
mornings  that  August  ever  bestowed,  and  it  required  some 
resolution  to  trudge  along  the  shadeless  chaussee,  which 
formed  the  first  two  or  three  miles  of  our  way.  One  com* 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


211 


pensating  pleasure  was  the  sight  of  the  beautiful  mountain- 
ash  trees  in  full  berry,  which,  alternately  with  cherry-trees, 
border  the  road  for  a  considerable  distance.  At  last  we 
rested  from  our  broiling  walk  on  the  borders  of  a  glorious 
pine  wood,  so  extensive  that  the  trees  in  the  distance  form  a 
complete  wall  with  then  trunks,  and  so  give  one  a  twilight 
very  welcome  on  a  summer’s  noon.  Under  these  pines  you 
tread  on  a  carpet  of  the  softest  moss,  so  that  you  hear  no 
sound  of  a  footstep,  and  all  is  as  solemn  and  still  as  in  the 
crypt  of  a  cathedral.  Presently  we  passed  out  of  the  pine 
wood  into  one  of  limes,  beeches,  and  other  trees  of  trans¬ 
parent  and  light  foliage  ;  and  from  this  again  we  emerged  into 
the  open  space  of  the  Ettersburg  Park  in  front  of  the  Schloss, 
which  is  finely  placed  on  an  eminence  commanding  a  mag¬ 
nificent  view  of  the  far-reaching  woods.  Prince  Piickler 
Muskau  has  been  of  service  here  by  recommending  openings 
to  be  made  in  the  woods,  in  the  taste  of  the  English  parks. 
The  Schloss,  which  is  a  favorite  residence  of  the  Grand  Duke, 
is  a  house  of  very  moderate  size,  and  no  pretension  of  any 
kind.  Its  stuccoed  walls,  and  doors  long  unacquainted  with 
fresh  paint,  would  look  distressingly  shabby  to  the  owner  of 
a  villa  at  Richmond  or  Twickenham ;  but  much  beauty  is  pro¬ 
cured  here  at  slight  expense,  by  the  tasteful  disposition  of 
creepers  on  the  balustrades,  and  pretty  vases  full  of  plants 
ranged  along  the  steps,  or  suspended  in  the  little  piazza 
beneath  them.  A  walk  through  a  beech-wood  took  us  to  the 
Mooshiitte,  in  front  of  which  stands  the  famous  beech  from 
whence  Goethe  denounced  Jacobi’s  “Woldemar.”  The  bark 
is  covered  with  initials  cut  by  him  and  his  friends. 

People  who  only  allow  themselves  to  be  idle  under  the 
pretext  of  hydropathizing,  may  find  all  the  apparatus  neces¬ 
sary  to  satisfy  their  conscience  at  Bercka,  a  village  seated  in 
a  lovely  valley  about  six  miles  from  Weimar.  Now  and  then 
a  Weimar  family  takes  lodgings  here  for  the  summer,  retiring 
from  the  quiet  of  the  capital  to  the  deeper  quiet  of  Bercka ; 
but  generally  the  place  seems  not  much  frequented.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine  a  more  peace-inspiring  scene  than  this 


212 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


little  valley.  The  hanging  woods ;  the  soft  coloring  and 
graceful  outline  of  the  uplands ;  the  village,  with  its  roofs 
and  spire  of  a  reddish-violet  hue,  muffled  in  luxuriant  trees  •, 
the  white  Kurhaus  glittering  on  a  grassy  slope ;  the  avenue 
of  poplars  contrasting  its  pretty  primness  with  the  wild, 
bushy  outline  of  the  wood-covered  hill,  which  rises  abruptly 
from  the  smooth,  green  meadows ;  the  clear,  winding  stream, 
now  sparkling  in  the  sun,  now  hiding  itself  under  soft  gray 
willows,  —  all  this  makes  an  enchanting  picture.  The  walk 
to  Bercka  and  back  was  a  favorite  expedition  with  us  and  a 
few  Weimar  friends ;  for  the  road  thither  is  a  pleasant  one, 
leading  at  first  through  open,  cultivated  fields,  dotted  here 
and  there  with  villages,  and  then  through  wooded  hills,  — the 
outskirts  of  the  Thuringian  Forest.  We  used  not  to  despise 
the  fine  plums  which  hung  in  tempting  abundance  by  the 
roadside  ;  but  we  afterwards  found  that  we  had  been  deceived 
in  supposing  ourselves  free  to  pluck  them,  as  if  it  were  the 
golden  age,  and  that  we  were  liable  to  a  penalty  of  ten 
groschen  for  our  depredations. 

But  I  must  not  allow  myself  to  be  exhaustive  on  pleasures 
which  seem  monotonous  when  told,  though  in  enjoying  them 
one  is  as  far  from  wishing  them  to  be  more  various  as  from 
wishing  for  any  change  in  the  sweet  sameness  of  successive 
summer  days.  I  will  only  advise  the  reader  who  has  yet  to 
make  excursions  in  Thuringia  to  visit  Jena,  less  for  its  tra¬ 
ditions  than  for  its  fine  scenery,  which  makes  it,  as  Goethe 
says,  a  delicious  place  in  spite  of  its  dull,  ugly  streets ;  and 
exhort  him,  above  all,  to  brave  the  discomforts  of  a  Postwagen 
for  the  sake  of  getting  to  Ilmenau.  Here  he  will  find  the 
grandest  pine-clad  hills,  with  endless  walks  under  their  sol¬ 
emn  shades ;  beech-woods  where  every  tree  is  a  picture ;  an 
air  that  he  will  breathe  with  as  conscious  a  pleasure  as  if  he 
were  taking  iced  water  on  a  hot  day ;  baths  ad  libitum,  with 
a  douche  lofty  and  tremendous  enough  to  invigorate  the  giant 
Cormoran ;  and  more  than  all,  one  of  the  most  interesting 
relics  of  Goethe,  who  had  a  great  love  for  Ilmenau.  This  is 
the  small  wooden  house,  on  the  height  called  the  Kickelhahn, 


THREE  MONTHS  IN  WEIMAR. 


213 


where  he  often  lived  in  his  long  retirements  here,  and  where 
you  may  see  written  by  his  own  hand,  near  the  window 
frame,  those  wonderful  lines,  —  perhaps  the  finest  expression 
yet  given  to  the  sense  of  resignation  inspired  by  the  sublime 
calm  of  Nature,  — 

“  Ueber  alien  Gipfeln 
1st  Ruh, 

In  alien  Wipfeln 
Spiirest  du 
Kaum  einen  Hauch ; 

Die  Vogelein  schweigen  im  Walde, 

Warte  nur,  balde 
Ruhest  du  auch.” 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT 
ELLO W-WORKMEN  :  I  am  not  going  to  take  up  youi 


-L1  time  by  complimenting  you.  It  has  been  the  fashion 
to  compliment  kings  and  other  authorities  when  they  have 
come  into  power,  and  to  tell  them  that,  under  their  wise  and 
beneficent  rule,  happiness  would  certainly  overflow  the  land 
But  the  end  has  not  always  corresponded  to  that  beginning 
If  it  were  true  that  we  who  work  for  wages  had  more  of  the 
wisdom  and  virtue  necessary  to  the  right  use  of  power  than 
has  been  shown  by  the  aristocratic  and  mercantile  classes,  we 
should  not  glory  much  in  that  fact,  or  consider  that  it  car¬ 
ried  with  it  any  near  approach  to  infallibility. 

In  my  opinion  there  has  been  too  much  complimenting  of 
that  sort ;  and  whenever  a  speaker,  whether  he  is  one  of  our¬ 
selves  or  not,  wastes  our  time  in  boasting  or  flattery,  I  say, 
let  us  hiss  him.  If  we  have  the  beginning  of  wisdom,  which 
is,  to  know  a  little  truth  about  ourselves,  we  know  that  as  a 
body  we  are  neither  very  wise  nor  very  virtuous.  And  to 
prove  this,  I  will  not  point  specially  to  our  own  habits  and 
doings,  but  to  the  general  state  of  the  country.  Any  nation 
that  had  within  it  a  majority  of  men  —  and  we  are  the  ma¬ 
jority —  possessed  of  much  wisdom  and  virtue,  would  not 
tolerate  the  bad  practices,  the  commercial  lying  and  swind¬ 
ling,  the  poisonous  adulteration  of  goods,  the  retail  cheating, 
and  the  political  bribery  which  are  carried  on  boldly  in  the 
midst  of  us.  A  majority  has  the  power  of  creating  a  public 
opinion.  We  could  groan  and  hiss  before  we  had  the  fran¬ 
chise  :  if  we  had  groaned  and  hissed  in  the  right  place,  if  we 
had  discerned  better  between  good  and  evil,  if  the  multitude 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN-,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  215 


of  us  artisans,  and  factory  hands,  and  miners,  and  laborers  of 
all  sorts,  had  been  skilful,  faithful,  well-judging,  industrious, 
sober,  —  and  I  don’t  see  how  there  can  be  wisdom  and  virtue 
anywhere  without  these  qualities,  — we  should  have  made  an 
audience  that  would  have  shamed  the  other  classes  out  of 
their  share  in  the  national  vices.  We  should  have  had  better 
members  of  Parliament,  better  religious  teachers,  honester 
tradesmen,  fewer  foolish  demagogues,  less  impudence  in  in¬ 
famous  and  brutal  men ;  and  we  should  not  have  had  among 
us  the  abomination  of  men  calling  themselves  religious  while 
living  in  splendor  on  ill-gotten  gains.  I  say,  it  is  not  possible 
for  any  society  in  which  there  is  a  very  large  body  of  wise 
and  virtuous  men  to  be  as  vicious  as  our  society  is,  —  to  have 
as  low  a  standard  of  right  and  wrong,  to  have  so  much  belief 
in  falsehood,  or  to  have  so  degrading,  barbarous  a  notion  of 
what  pleasure  is,  or  of  what  justly  raises  a  man  above  his 
fellows.  Therefore  let  us  have  done  with  this  nonsense 
about  our  being  much  better  than  the  rest  of  our  countrymen, 
or  the  pretence  that  that  was  a  reason  why  we  ought  to  have 
such  an  extension  of  the  franchise  as  has  been  given  to  us. 
The  reason  for  our  having  the  franchise,  as  I  want  presently 
to  show,  lies  somewhere  else  than  in  our  personal  good  quali¬ 
ties,  and  does  not  in  the  least  lie  in  any  high  betting  chance 
that  a  delegate  is  a  better  man  than  a  duke,  or  that  a  Shef¬ 
field  grinder  is  a  better  man  than  any  one  of  the  firm  he 
works  for. 

However,  we  have  got  our  franchise  now.  We  have  been 
sarcastically  called  in  the  House  of  Commons  the  future  mas¬ 
ters  of  the  country ;  and  if  that  sarcasm  contains  any  truth, 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  first  thing  we  had  better  think  of  is, 
our  heavy  responsibility,  —  that  is  to  say,  the  terrible  risk  we 
run  of  working  mischief  and  missing  good,  as  others  have 
done  before  us.  Suppose  certain  men,  discontented  with  the 
irrigation  of  a  country  which  depended  for  all  its  prosperity 
on  the  right  direction  being  given  to  the  waters  of  a  great 
river,  had  got  the  management  of  the  irrigation  before  they 
were  quite  sure  how  exactly  it  could  be  altered  for  the  better, 


216 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


or  whether  they  could  command  the  necessary  agency  for 
such  an  alteration.  Those  men  would  have  a  difficult  and 
dangerous  business  on  their  hands ;  and  the  more  sense,  feel¬ 
ing,  and  knowledge  they  had,  the  more  they  would  be  likely 
to  tremble  rather  than  to  triumph.  Our  situation  is  not  alto¬ 
gether  unlike  theirs.  For  general  prosperity  and  well-being 
is  a  vast  crop,  that  like  the  corn  in  Egypt  can  be  come  at,  not 
at  all  by  hurried  snatching,  but  only  by  a  well-judged  patient 
process ;  and  whether  our  political  power  will  be  any  good  to 
us  now  we  have  got  it,  must  depend  entirely  on  the  means 
and  materials,  —  the  knowledge,  ability,  and  honesty  we  have 
at  command.  These  three  things  are  the  only  conditions  on 
which  we  can  get  any  lasting  benefit,  as  every  clever  work¬ 
man  among  us  knows :  he  knows  that  for  an  article  to  be 
worth  much  there  must  be  a  good  invention  or  plan  to  go 
upon,  there  must  be  a  well-prepared  material,  and  there  must 
be  skilful  and  honest  work  in  carrying  out  the  plan.  And  by 
this  test  we  may  try  those  who  want  to  be  our  leaders.  Have 
they  anything  to  offer  us  besides  indignant  talk  ?  When 
they  tell  us  we  ought  to  have  this,  that,  or  the  other  thing, 
can  they  explain  to  us  any  reasonable,  fair,  safe  way  of  get¬ 
ting  it  ?  Can  they  argue  in  favor  of  a  particular  change  by 
showing  us  pretty  closely  how  the  change  is  likely  to  work  ? 
I  don’t  want  to  decry  a  just  indignation ;  on  the  contrary,  I 
should  like  it  to  be  more  thorough  and  general.  A  wise  man, 
more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  when  he  was  asked  what 
would  most  tend  to  lessen  injustice  in  the  world,  said,  “If 
every  bystander  felt  as  indignant  at  a  wrong  as  if  he  himself 
were  the  sufferer.”  Let  us  cherish  such  indignation.  But 
the  long-growing  evils  of  a  great  nation  are  a  tangled  busi¬ 
ness,  asking  for  a  good  deal  more  than  indignation  in  order 
to  be  got  rid  of.  Indignation  is  a  fine  war-horse,  but  the 
war-horse  must  be  ridden  by  a  man :  it  must  be  ridden  by 
rationality,  skill,  courage,  armed  with  the  right  weapons,  and 
taking  definite  aim. 

We  have  reason  to  be  discontented  with  many  things,  and, 
looking  back  either  through  the  history  of  England  to  much 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKTNG-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  217 


earlier  generations  or  to  the  legislation  and  administrations 
of  later  times,  we  are  justified  in  saying  that  many  of  the 
evils  under  which  our  country  now  suffers  are  the  conse¬ 
quences  of  folly,  ignorance,  neglect,  or  self-seeking  in  those 
who,  at  different  times,  have  wielded  the  powers  of  rank, 
office,  and  money.  But  the  more  bitterly  we  feel  this,  the 
more  loudly  we  utter  it,  the  stronger  is  the  obligation  we  lay 
on  ourselves  to  beware,  lest  we  also,  by  a  too  hasty  wresting 
of  measures  which  seem  to  promise  an  immediate  partial  re¬ 
lief,  make  a  worse  time  of  it  for  our  own  generation,  and 
leave  a  bad  inheritance  to  our  children.  The  deepest  curse 
of  wrong-doing,  whether  of  the  foolish  or  wicked  sort,  is  that 
its  effects  are  difficult  to  be  undone.  I  suppose  there  is 
hardly  anything  more  to  be  shuddered  at  than  that  part  of 
the  history  of  disease  which  shows  how,  when  a  man  injures 
his  constitution  by  a  life  of  vicious  excess,  his  children  and 
grandchildren  inherit  diseased  bodies  and  minds,  and  how 
the  effects  of  that  unhappy  inheritance  continue  to  spread 
beyond  our  calculation.  This  is  only  one  example  of  the  law 
by  which  human  lives  are  linked  together;  another  example 
of  what  we  complain  of  when  we  point  to  our  pauperism,  to 
the  brutal  ignorance  of  multitudes  among  our  fellow-country¬ 
men,  to  the  weight  of  taxation  laid  on  us  by  blamable  wars, 
to  the  wasteful  channels  made  for  the  public  money,  to  the 
expense  and  trouble  of  getting  justice,  and  call  these  the  ef¬ 
fects  of  bad  rule.  This  is  the  law  that  we  all  bear  the  yoke 
of,  —  the  law  of  no  man’s  making,  and  which  no  man  can  undo. 
Everybody  now  sees  an  example  of  it  in  the  case  of  Ireland. 
We  who  are  living  now  are  sufferers  by  the  wrong-doing  of 
those  who  lived  before  us ;  we  are  the  sufferers  by  each 
other’s  wrong-doing ;  and  the  children  who  come  after  us  are 
and  will  be  sufferers  from  the  same  causes.  Will  any  man 
say  he  does  n’t  care  for  that  law  —  it  is  nothing  to  him  — 
what  he  wants  is  to  better  himself  ?  With  what  face  then 
will  he  complain  of  any  injury  ?  If  he  says  that  in  politics 
or  in  any  sort  of  social  action  he  will  not  care  to  know  what 
are  likely  to  be  the  consequences  to  others  besides  himself,  he 


218 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


is  defending  the  very  worst  doings  that  have  brought  about 
his  discontent.  He  might  as  well  say  that  there  is  no  better 
rule  needful  for  men  than  that  each  should  tug  and  drive  for 
what  will  please  him,  without  caring  how  that  tugging  will 
act  on  the  fine  wide-spread  network  of  society  in  which  he  is 
fast  meshed.  If  any  man  taught  that  as  a  doctrine,  we  should 
know  him  for  a  fool.  But  there  are  men  who  act  upon  it ; 
every  scoundrel,  for  example,  whether  he  is  a  rich  religious 
scoundrel  who  lies  and  cheats  on  a  large  scale,  and  will  per¬ 
haps  come  and  ask  you  to  send  him  to  Parliament,  or  a  poor 
pocket-picking  scoundrel,  who  will  steal  your  loose  pence 
while  you  are  listening  round  the  platform.  None  of  us  are 
so  ignorant  as  not  to  know  that  a  society,  a  nation,  is  held  to¬ 
gether  by  just  the  opposite  doctrine  and  action, — by  the  de¬ 
pendence  of  men  on  each  other  and  the  sense  they  have  of  a 
common  interest  in  preventing  injury.  And  we  working-men 
are,  I  think,  of  all  classes  the  last  that  can  afford  to  forget 
this ;  for  if  we  did  we  should  be  much  like  sailors  cutting 
away  the  timbers  of  our  own  ship  to  warm  our  grog  with. 
For  what  else  is  the  meaning  of  our  trades-unions  ?  What 
else  is  the  meaning  of  every  flag  we  carry,  every  procession 
we  make,  every  crowd  we  collect  for  the  sake  of  making  some 
protest  on  behalf  of  our  body  as  receivers  of  wages,  if  not 
this :  that  it  is  our  interest  to  stand  by  each  other,  and  that 
this  being  the  common  interest,  no  one  of  us  will  try  to  make 
a  good  bargain  for  himself  without  considering  what  will  be 
good  for  his  fellows  ?  And  every  member  of  a  union  believes 
that  the  wider  he  can  spread  his  union,  the  stronger  and 
surer  will  be  the  effect  of  it.  So  I  think  I  shall  be  borne  out 
in  saying  that  a  working-man  who  can  put  two  and  two  to¬ 
gether,  or  take  three  from  four  and  see  what  will  be  the  re¬ 
mainder,  can  understand  that  a  society,  to  be  well  off,  must 
be  made  up  chiefly  of  men  who  consider  the  general  good  as 
well  as  their  own. 

Well,  but  taking  the  world  as  it  is  —  and  this  is  one  way 
we  must  take  it  when  we  want  to  find  out  how  it  can  be  im¬ 
proved —  no  society  is  made  up  of  a  single  class:  society 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  21 9 


stands  before  us  like  that  wonderful  piece  of  life,  the  human 
body,  with  all  its  various  parts  depending  on  one  another, 
and  with  a  terrible  liability  to  get  wrong  because  of  that  del¬ 
icate  dependence.  We  all  know  how  many  diseases  the  hu¬ 
man  body  is  apt  to  suffer  from,  and  how  difficult  it  is  even 
for  the  doctors  to  find  out  exactly  where  the  seat  or  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  disorder  is.  That  is  because  the  body  is  made  up 
of  so  many  various  parts,  all  related  to  each  other,  or  likely 
all  to  feel  the  effect  if  any  one  of  them  goes  wrong.  It  is 
somewhat  the  same  with  our  old  nations  or  societies.  No 
society  ever  stood  long  in  the  world  without  getting  to  be 
composed  of  different  classes.  Now,  it  is  all  pretence  to  say 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  class  interest.  It  is  clear  that 
if  any  particular  number  of  men  get  a  particular  benefit  from 
any  existing  institution,  they  are  likely  to  band  together,  in 
order  to  keep  up  that  benefit  and  increase  it,  until  it  is  per¬ 
ceived  to  be  unfair  and  injurious  to  another  large  number, 
who  get  knowledge  and  strength  enough  to  set  up  a  resist¬ 
ance.  And  this,  again,  has  been  part  of  the  history  of  every 
great  society  since  history  began.  But  the  simple  reason  foi 
this  being,  that  any  large  body  of  men  is  likely  to  have  mor<- 
of  stupidity,  narrowness,  and  greed  than  of  far-sightednee* 
and  generosity,  it  is  plain  that  the  number  who  resist  unfair¬ 
ness  and  injury  are  in  danger  of  becoming  injurious  in  their 
turn.  And  in  this  way  a  justifiable  resistance  has  become  a 
damaging  convulsion,  making  everything  worse  instead  of 
better.  This  has  been  seen  so  often  that  we  ought  to  profit 
a  little  by  the  experience.  So  long  as  there  is  selfishness  in 
men ;  so  long  as  they  have  not  found  out  for  themselves  institu-j 
tions  which  express  and  carry  into  practice  the  truth,  that  the 
highest  interest  of  mankind  must  at  last  be  a  common  and 
not  a  divided  interest ;  so  long  as  the  gradual  operation  of 
steady  causes  has  not  made  that  truth  a  part  of  every  man’s 
knowledge  and  feeling,  just  as  we  now  not  only  know  that  it 
is  good  for  our  health  to  be  cleanly,  but  feel  that  cleanliness 
is  only  another  word  for  comfort,  which  is  the  under  side  or 
lining  of  all  pleasure,  —  so  long,  I  say,  as  men  wink  at  their 


220 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


own  knowingness,  or  hold  their  heads  high  because  they  have 
got  an  advantage  over  their  fellows,  so  long  class  interest 
will  be  in  danger  of  making  itself  felt  injuriously.  No  set  of 
men  will  get  any  sort  of  power  without  being  in  danger  of 
wanting  more  than  their  right  share.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  just  as  certain  that  no  set  of  men  will  get  angry 
at  having  less  than  their  right  share,  and  set  up  a  claim  on 
that  ground,  without  falling  into  just  the  same  danger  of  ex¬ 
acting  too  much,  and  exacting  it  in  wrong  ways.  It ’s  human 
nature  we  have  got  to  work  with  all  round,  and  nothing  else. 
That  seems  like  saying  something  very  commonplace,  —  nay, 
obvious ;  as  if  one  should  say  that  where  there  are  hands 
there  are  mouths.  Yet,  to  hear  a  good  deal  of  the  speechify¬ 
ing  and  to  see  a  good  deal  of  the  action  that  go  forward,  one 
might  suppose  it  was  forgotten. 

But  I  come  back  to  this  :  that,  in  our  old  society,  there  are 
old  institutions,  and  among  them  the  various  distinctions  and 
inherited  advantages  of  classes,  which  have  shaped  them¬ 
selves  along  with  all  the  wonderful,  slow-growing  system  of 
things  made  up  of  our  laws,  our  commerce,  and  our  stores  of 
all  sorts,  whether  in  material  objects,  such  as  buildings  and 
machinery,  or  in  knowledge,  such  as  scientific  thought  and 
professional  skill.  Just  as  in  that  case  I  spoke  of  before,  the 
irrigation  of  a  country,  which  must  absolutely  have  its  water 
distributed  or  it  will  bear  no  crop ;  there  are  the  old  channels, 
the  old  banks,  and  the  old  pumps,  which  must  be  used  as 
they  are  until  new  and  better  have  been  prepared,  or  the 
structure  of  the  old  has  been  gradually  altered.  But  it  would 
be  fool’s  work  to  batter  down  a  pump  only  because  a  better 
might  be  made,  when  you  had  no  machinery  ready  for  a  new 
one :  it  would  be  wicked  work,  if  villages  lost  their  crops  by 
it.  Now  the  only  safe  way  by  which  society  can  be  steadily 
improved  and  our  worst  evils  reduced,  is  not  by  any  attempt  to 
do  away  directly  with  the  actually  existing  class  distinctions 
and  advantages,  as  if  everybody  could  have  the  same  sort  of 
work,  or  lead  the  same  sort  of  life  (which  none  of  my  hearers 
are  stupid  enough  to  suppose),  but  by  the  turning  of  class 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  221 


interests  into  class  functions  or  duties.  What  I  mean  is,  that 
each  class  should  he  urged  by  the  surrounding  conditions  to 
perform  its  particular  work  under  the  strong  pressure  of  re¬ 
sponsibility  to  the  nation  at  large ;  that  our  public  affairs 
should  be  got  into  a  state  in  which  there  should  be  no  impun¬ 
ity  for  foolish  or  faithless  conduct.  In  this  way  the  public 
judgment  would  sift  out  incapability  and  dishonesty  from 
posts  of  high  charge,  and  even  personal  ambitiou  would  nec¬ 
essarily  become  of  a  worthier  sort,  since  the  desires  of  the 
most  selfish  men  must  be  a  good  deal  shaped  by  the  opinions 
of  those  around  them ;  and  for  one  person  to  put  on  a  cap 
and  bells,  or  to  go  about  dishonest  or  paltry  ways  of  getting 
rich  that  he  may  spend  a  vast  sum  of  money  in  having  more 
finery  than  his  neighbors,  he  must  be  pretty  sure  of  a  crowd 
who  will  applaud  him.  Now,  changes  can  only  be  good  in 
proportion  as  they  help  to  bring  about  this  sort  of  result ;  in 
proportion  as  they  put  knowledge  in  the  place  of  ignorance, 
and  fellow-feeling  in  the  place  of  selfishness.  In  the  course 
of  that  substitution  class  distinctions  must  inevitably  change 
their  character,  and  represent  the  varying  duties  of  men,  not 
their  varying  interests.  But  this  end  will  not  come  by  impa¬ 
tience.  “  Day  will  not  break  the  sooner  because  we  get  up, 
before  the  twilight.”  Still  less  will  it  come  by  mere  undoing, 
or  change  merely  as  change.  And  moreover,  if  we  believed 
that  it  would  be  unconditionally  hastened  by  our  getting  the 
franchise,  we  should  be  what  I  call  superstitious  men,  believ¬ 
ing  in  magic,  or  the  production  of  a  result  by  hocus-pocus. 
Our  getting  the  franchise  will  greatly  hasten  that  good  end 
in  proportion  only  as  every  one  of  us  has  the  knowledge,  the 
foresight,  the  conscience,  that  will  make  him  well-judging  and 
scrupulous  in  the  use  of  it.  The  nature  of  things  in  this 
world  has  been  determined  for  us  beforehand,  and  in  such  a 
way  that  no  ship  can  be  expected  to  sail  well  on  a  difficult 
foyage,  and  reach  the  right  port,  unless  it  is  well  manned : 
■the  nature  of  the  winds  and  the  waves,  of  the  timbers,  the 
*ails,  and  the  cordage,  will  not  accommodate  itself  to  drunken, 
mutinous  sailors. 


222 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


You  will  not  suspect  rue  of  wanting  to  preach  any  cant  to 
you,  or  of  joining  in  the  pretence  that  everything  is  in  a  fine 
way,  and  need  not  be  made  better.  What  I  am  striving  to 
keep  in  our  minds  is  the  care,  the  precaution,  with  which  we 
should  go  about  making  things  better,  so  that  the  public  order 
may  not  be  destroyed,  so  that  no  fatal  shock  may  be  given  to 
this  society  of  ours,  this  living  body  in  which  our  lives  are 
bound  up.  After  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  I  was  in  an  elec¬ 
tion  riot,  which  showed  me  clearly,  on  a  small  scale,  what  pub¬ 
lic  disorder  must  always  be ;  and  I  have  never  forgotten  that 
the  riot  was  brought  about  chiefly  by  the  agency  of  dishonest 
men  who  professed  to  be  on  the  people's  side.  Now,  the  dan¬ 
ger  hanging  over  change  is  great,  just  in  proportion  as  it 
tends  to  produce  such  disorder  by  giving  any  large  number  of 
ignorant  men,  whose  notions  of  what  is  good  are  of  a  low  and 
brutal  sort,  the  belief  that  they  have  got  power  into  their 
hands,  and  may  do  pretty  much  as  they  like.  If  any  one  can 
look  round  us  and  say  that  he  sees  no  signs  of  any  such  dan¬ 
ger  now,  and  that  our  national  condition  is  running  along  like 
a  clear  broadening  stream,  safe  not  to  get  choked  with  mud,  I 
call  him  a  cheerful  man :  perhaps  he  does  his  own  gardening, 
and  seldom  takes  exercise  far  away  from  home.  To  us  who 
have  no  gardens,  and  often  walk  abroad,  it  is  plain  that  we 
can  never  get  into  a  bit  of  a  crowd  but  we  must  rub  clothes 
with  a  set  of  roughs,  who  have  the  worst  vices  of  the  worst 
rich,  —  who  are  gamblers,  sots,  libertines,  knaves,  or  else 
mere  sensual  simpletons  and  victims.  They  are  the  ugly 
crop  that  has  sprung  up  while  the  stewards  have  been  sleep¬ 
ing  ;  they  are  the  multiplying  brood  begotten  by  parents  who 
have  been  left  without  all  teaching  save  that  of  a  too  craving 
body,  without  all  well-being  save  the  fading  delusions  of 
drugged  beer  and  gin.  They  are  the  hideous  margin  of  so¬ 
ciety,  at  one  edge  drawing  toward  it  the  undesigning  igno¬ 
rant  poor,  at  the  other  darkening  imperceptibly  into  the 
lowest  criminal  class.  Here  is  one  of  the  evils  which  cannot 
be  got  rid  of  quickly,  and  against  which  any  of  us  who  have 
got  sense,  decency,  and  instruction  have  need  to  watch. 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  22o 


That  these  degraded  fellow-men  could  really  get  the  mastery 
in  a  persistent  disobedience  to  the  laws  and  in  a  struggle  to 
subvert  order,  I  do  not  believe  ,  but  wretched  calamities  must 
come  from  the  very  beginning  of  such  a  struggle,  and  the 
continuance  of  it  would  be  a  civil  war,  in  which  the  inspira¬ 
tion  on  both  sides  might  soon  cease  to  be  even  a  false  notion 
of  good,  and  might  become  the  direct  savage  impulse  of  feroc¬ 
ity.  We  have  all  to  see  to  it  that  we  do  not  help  to  rouse 
what  I  may  call  the  savage  beast  in  the  breasts  of  our  gener¬ 
ation,  —  that  we  do  not  help  to  poison  the  nation’s  blood,  and 
make  richer  provision  for  bestiality  to  come.  We  know 
well  enough  that  oppressors  have  sinned  in  this  way,  —  that 
oppression  has  notoriously  made  men  mad ;  and  we  are  de¬ 
termined  to  resist  oppression.  But  let  us,  if  possible,  show 
that  we  can  keep  sane  in  our  resistance,  and  shape  our  means 
more  and  more  reasonably  toward  the  least  harmful,  and 
therefore  the  speediest,  attainment  of  our  end.  Let  us,  I  say, 
show  that  our  spirits  are  too  strong  to  be  driven  mad,  but 
can  keep  that  sober  determination  which  alone  gives  mastery 
over  the  adaptation  of  means.  And  a  first  guarantee  of  this 
sanity  will  be  to  act  as  if  we  understood  that  the  fundamental 
duty  of  a  government  is  to  preserve  order,  to  enforce  obe¬ 
dience  of  the  laws.  It  has  been  held  hitherto  that  a  man  can 
be  depended  on  as  a  guardian  of  order  only  when  he  has 
much  money  and  comfort  to  lose.  But  a  better  state  of 
things  would  be,  that  men  who  had  little  money  and  not 
much  comfort  should  still  be  guardians  of  order,  because  they 
had  sense  to  see  that  disorder  would  do  no  good,  and  had  a 
heart  of  justice,  pity,  and  fortitude,  to  keep  them  from  mak¬ 
ing  more  misery  only  because  they  felt  some  misery  them¬ 
selves.  There  are  thousands  of  artisans  who  have  already 
shown  this  fine  spirit,  and  have  endured  much  with  patient 
heroism.  If  such  a  spirit  spread,  and  penetrated  us  all,  we 
should  soon  become  the  masters  of  the  country  in  the  best 
sense  and  to  the  best  ends.  For,  the  public  order  being  pre¬ 
served,  there  can  be  no  government  in  future  that  will  not 
be  determined  by  our  insistence  on  our  fair  and  practicable 


224 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


demands.  It  is  only  by  disorder  that  our  demands  will  be 
choked,  that  we  shall  find  ourselves  lost  among  a  brutal  rab* 
ble,  with  all  the  intelligence  of  the  country  opposed  to  us, 
and  see  government  in  the  shape  of  guns  that  will  sweep  us 
down  in  the  ignoble  martyrdom  of  fools. 

It  has  been  a  too  common  notion  that  to  insist  much  on 
the  preservation  of  order  is  the  part  of  a  selfish  aristocracy 
and  a  selfish  commercial  class,  because  among  these,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  have  been  found  the  opponents  of  change. 
I  am  a  Radical ;  and  what  is  more,  I  am  not  a  Radical  with  a 
title,  or  a  French  cook,  or  even  an  entrance  into  fine  society. 
I  expect  great  changes,  and  I  desire  them.  But  I  don’t  ex¬ 
pect  them  to  come  in  a  hurry*,  by  mere  inconsiderate  sweep¬ 
ing.  A  Hercules  with  a  big  besom  is  a  fine  thing  for  a  filthy 
stable,  but  not  for  weeding  a  seed-bed,  where  his  besom  would 
soon  make  a  barren  floor. 

That  is  old-fashioned  talk,  some  one  may  say.  We  know 
all  that. 

Yes,  when  things  are  put  in  an  extreme  way,  most  people 
think  they  know  them  ;  but,  after  all,  they  are  comparatively 
few  who  see  the  small  degrees  by  which  those  extremes  are 
arrived  at,  or  have  the  resolution  and-self  control  to  resist 
the  little  impulses  by  which  they  creep  on  surely  toward  a 
fatal  end.  Does  anybody  set  out  meaning  to  ruin  himself,  or 
to  drink  himself  to  death,  or  to  waste  his  life  so  that  he  be¬ 
comes  a  despicable  old  man,  a  superannuated  nuisance,  like 
a  fly  in  winter.  Yet  there  are  plenty,  of  whose  lot  this  is  the 
pitiable  story.  Well  now,  supposing  us  all  to  have  the  best 
intentions,  we  working-men,  as  a  body,  run  some  risk  of 
bringing  evil  on  the  nation  in  that  unconscious  manner  — 
half  hurrying,  half  pushed  in  a  jostling  march  toward  an  end 
we  are  not  thinking  of.  For  just  as  there  are  many  things 
which  we  know  better  and  feel  much  more  strongly  than  the 
richer,  softer-handed  classes  can  know  or  feel  them  ;  so  there 
are  many  things  —  many  precious  benefits  —  which  we,  by 
the  very  fact  of  our  privations,  our  lack  of  leisure  and  in¬ 
struction,  are  not  so  likely  to  be  aware  of  and  take  into  our 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  225 


account.  Those  precious  benefits  form  a  chief  part  of  what 
I  may  call  the  common  estate  of  society  :  a  wealth  over  and 
above  buildings,  machinery,  produce,  shipping,  and  so  on, 
though  closely  connected  with  these  ;  a  wealth  of  a  more  del¬ 
icate  kind,  that  we  may  more  unconsciously  bring  into  dan¬ 
ger,  doing  harm  and  not  knowing  that  we  do  it.  I  mean  that 
treasure  of  knowledge,  science,  poetry,  refinement  of  thought, 
feeling,  and  manners,  great  memories  and  the  interpretation 
of  great  records,  which  is  carried  on  from  the  minds  of  one 
generation  to  the  minds  of  another.  This  is  something  dis¬ 
tinct  from  the  indulgences  of  luxury  and  the  pursuit  of  vain 
finery ;  and  one  of  the  hardships  in  the  lot  of  working-men 
is  that  they  have  been  for  the  most  part  shut  out  from  shar¬ 
ing  in  this  treasure.  It  can  make  a  man’s  life  very  great, 
very  full  of  delight,  though  he  has  no  smart  furniture  and  no 
horses :  it  also  yields  a  great  deal  of  discovery  that  corrects 
error,  and  of  invention  that  lessens  bodily  pain,  and  must  at 
least  make  life  easier  for  all. 

How  the  security  of  this  treasure  demands,  not  only  the 
preservation  of  order,  but  a  certain  patience  on  our  part  with 
many  institutions  and  facts  of  various  kinds,  especially  touch¬ 
ing  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  which  from  the  light  we 
stand  in,  we  are  more  likely  to  discern  the  evil  than  the  good 
of.  It  is  constantly  the  task  of  practical  wisdom  not  to  say, 
“  This  is  good,  and  I  will  have  it,”  but  to  say,  “  This  is  the 
less  of  two  unavoidable  evils,  and  I  will  bear  it.”  And  this 
treasure  of  knowledge,  which  consists  in  the  fine  activity,  the 
exalted  vision  of  many  minds,  is  bound  up  at  present  with 
conditions  which  have  much  evil  in  them.  Just  as  in  the 
case  of  material  wealth  and  its  distribution  we  are  obliged  to 
take  the  selfishness  and  weaknesses  of  human  nature  into 
account,  and  however  we  insist  that  men  might  act  better, 
are  forced,  unless  we  are  fanatical  simpletons,  to  consider 
how  they  are  likely  to  act ;  so  in  this  matter  of  the  wealth 
that  is  carried  in  men’s  minds,  we  have  to  reflect  that  the  too 
absolute  predominance  of  a  class  whose  wants  have  been  of 
a  common  sort,  who  are  chiefly  struggling  to  get  better  and 

\0 


von.  xjt. 


226 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


more  food,  clothing,  shelter,  and  bodily  recreation,  may  lead 
to  hasty  measures  for  the  sake  of  having  things  more  fairly 
shared,  which,  even  if  they  did  not  fail  of  their  object,  would 
at  last  debase  the  life  of  the  nation.  Do  anything  which  will 
throw  the  classes  who  hold  the  treasures  of  knowledge  —  nay, 
I  may  say,  the  treasures  of  refined  needs  —  into  the  back¬ 
ground,  cause  them  to  withdraw  from  public  affairs,  stop  too 
suddenly  any  of  the  sources  by  which  their  leisure  and  ease 
are  furnished,  rob  them  of  the  chances  by  which  they  may  be 
influential  and  pre-eminent,  and  you  do  something  as  short¬ 
sighted  as  the  acts  of  France  and  Spain  when  in  jealousy  and 
wrath,  not  altogether  unprovoked,  they  drove  from  among 
them  races  and  classes  that  held  the  traditions  of  handicraft 
and  agriculture.  You  injure  your  own  inheritance  and  the 
inheritance  of  your  children.  You  may  truly  say  that  this 
which  I  call  the  common  estate  of  society  has  been  anything 
but  common  to  you ;  but  the  same  may  be  said,  by  many  of 
us,  of  the  sunlight  and  the  air,  of  the  sky  and  the  fields,  of 
parks  and  holiday  games.  Nevertheless,  that  these  blessings 
exist  makes  life  worthier  to  us,  and  urges  us  the  more  to  en¬ 
ergetic,  likely  means  of  getting  our  share  in  them  ;  and  I  say, 
let  us  watch  carefully,  lest  we  do  anything  to  lessen  this 
treasure  which  is  held  in  the  minds  of  men,  while  we  exert 
ourselves,  first  of  all,  and  to  the  very  utmost,  that  we  and 
our  children  may  share  in  all  its  benefits.  Yes ;  exert  our¬ 
selves  to  the  utmost,  to  break  the  yoke  of  ignorance.  If  we 
demand  more  leisure,  more  ease  in  our  lives,  let  us  show  that 
we  don't  deserve  the  reproach  of  wanting  to  shirk  that  indus¬ 
try  which,  in  some  form  or  other,  every  man,  whether  rich  or 
poor,  should  feel  himself  as  much  bound  to  as  he  is  bound  to 
decency.  Let  us  show  that  we  want  to  have  some  time  and 
strength  left  to  us,  that  we  may  use  it,  not  for  brutal  in¬ 
dulgence,  but  for  the  rational  exercise  of  the  faculties  which 
make  us  men.  Without  this  no  political  measures  can  bene¬ 
fit  us.  No  political  institution  will  alter  the  nature  of  Igno¬ 
rance,  or  hinder  it  from  producing  vice  and  misery.  Let 
Ignorance  start  how  it  will,  it  must  run  the  same  round  of 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  227 


low  appetites,  poverty,  slavery,  and  superstition.  Some  of  us 
know  this  well,  —  nay,  I  will  say,  feel  it,  —  for  knowledge  of 
this  kind  cuts  deep ;  and  to  us  it  is  one  of  the  most  painful 
facts  belonging  to  our  condition  that  there  are  numbers  of 
our  fellow-workmen  who  are  so  far  from  feeling  in  the  same 
way,  that  they  never  use  the  imperfect  opportunities  already 
offered  them  for  giving  their  children  some  schooling,  but 
turn  their  little  ones  of  tender  age  into  bread-winners,  often 
at  cruel  tasks,  exposed  to  the  horrible  infection  of  childish 
vice.  Of  course,  the  causes  of  these  hideous  things  go  a  long 
way  back.  Parents’  misery  has  made  parents’  wickedness. 
But  we  who  are  still  blessed  with  the  hearts  of  fathers  and 
the  consciences  of  men,  —  we  who  have  some  knowledge  of  the 
curse  entailed  on  broods  of  creatures  in  human  shape,  whose 
enfeebled  bodies  and  dull  perverted  minds  are  mere  centres 
of  uneasiness  in  whom  even  appetite  is  feeble  and  joy  impos¬ 
sible,  —  I  say  we  are  bound  to  use  all  the  means  at  our  com¬ 
mand  to  help  in  putting  a  stop  to  this  horror.  Here,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  a  way  in  which  we  may  use  extended  co-operation 
among  us  to  the  most  momentous  of  all  purposes,  and  make 
conditions  of  enrolment  that  would  strengthen  all  educational 
measures.  It  is  true  enough  that  there  is  a  low  sense  of  pa¬ 
rental  duties  in  the  nation  at  large,  and  that  numbers  who 
have  no  excuse  in  bodily  hardship  seem  to  think  it  a  light 
thing  to  beget  children,  to  bring  human  beings  with  all  their 
tremendous  possibilities  into  this  difficult  world,  and  then 
take  little  heed  how  they  are  disciplined  and  furnished  for 
che  perilous  journey  they  are  sent  on  without  any  asking  of 
their  own.  This  is  a  sin,  shared  in  more  or  less  by  all  classes ; 
but  there  are  sins  which,  like  taxation,  fall  the  heaviest  on 
the  poorest,  and  none  have  such  galling  reasons  as  we  work¬ 
ing-men  to  try  and  rouse  to  the  utmost  the  feeling  of  respon¬ 
sibility  in  fathers  and  mothers.  We  have  been  urged  into 
co-operation  by  the  pressure  of  common  demands.  In  war 
men  need  each  other  more;  and  where  a  given  point  has  to 
be  defended,  fighters  inevitably  find  themselves  shoulder  to 
shoulder.  So  fellowship  grows,  so  grow  the  rules  of  fellow 


228 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


ship,  which  gradually  shape  themselves  to  thoroughness  as 
the  idea  of  a  common  good  becomes  more  complete.  We  feel 
a  right  to  say,  If  you  will  be  one  of  us,  you  must  make  such 
and  such  a  contribution,  you  must  renounce  such  and  such  a 
separate  advantage,  you  must  set  your  face  against  such  and 
such  an  infringement.  If  we  have  any  false  ideas  about  our 
common  good,  our  rules  will  be  wrong,  and  we  shall  be  co-oper¬ 
ating  to  damage  each  other.  But,  now,  here  is  a  part  of  our 
good,  without  which  everything  else  we  strive  for  will  be 
worthless,  —  I  mean  the  rescue  of  our  children.  Let  us  de¬ 
mand  from  the  members  of  our  unions  that  they  fulfil  their 
duty  as  parents  in  this  definite  matter,  which  rules  can  reach. 
Let  us  demand  that  they  send  their  children  to  school,  so  as 
not  to  go  on  recklessly,  breeding  a  moral  pestilence  among 
us,  just  as  strictly  as  we  demand  that  they  pay  their  contri¬ 
butions  to  a  common  fund,  understood  to  be  for  a  common 
benefit.  While  we  watch  our  public  men,  let  us  watch  one 
another  as  to  this  duty,  which  is  also  public,  and  more  mo¬ 
mentous  even  than  obedience  to  sanitary  regulations.  While 
we  resolutely  declare  against  the  wickedness  in  high  places, 
let  us  set  ourselves  also  against  the  wickedness  in  low  places, 
not  quarrelling  which  came  first,  or  which  is  the  worse  of  the 
two,  —  not  trying  to  settle  the  miserable  precedence  of  plague 
or  famine,  but  insisting  unflinchingly  on  remedies  once  ascer¬ 
tained,  and  summoning  those  who  hold  the  treasure  of  knowl¬ 
edge  to  remember  that  they  hold  it  in  trust,  and  that  with 
them  lies  the  task  of  searching  for  new  remedies,  and  finding 
the  right  methods  of  applying  them. 

To  find  right  remedies  and  right  methods.  Here  is  the 
great  function  of  knowledge :  here  the  life  of  one  man  may 
make  a  fresh  era  straight  away,  in  which  a  sort  of  suffering 
that  has  existed  shall  exist  no  more.  For  the  thousands  of 
years  down  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  that  hu¬ 
man  limbs  had  been  hacked  and  amputated,  nobody  knew 
how  to  stop  the  bleeding  except  by  searing  the  ends  of  the 
vessels  with  red-hot  iron.  But  then  came  a  man  named  Am¬ 
brose  Pare,  and  said,  “  Tie  up  the  arteries !  ”  That  was  a  fine 


ADDRESS  TO  WORKING-MEN,  BY  FELIX  HOLT.  229 


word  to  utter.  It  contained  the  statement  of  a  method,  —  a 
plan  by  which  a  particular  evil  was  forever  assuaged.  Let 
us  try  to  discern  the  men  whose  words  carry  that  sort  of 
kernel,  and  choose  such  men  to  be  our  guides  and  representa¬ 
tives,  —  not  choose  platform  swaggerers,  who  bring  us  nothing 
but  the  ocean  to  make  our  broth  with. 

To  get  the  chief  power  into  the  hands  of  the  wisest,  which 
means  to  get  our  life  regulated  according  to  the  truest  prin¬ 
ciples  mankind  is  in  possession  of,  is  a  problem  as  old  as  the 
very  notion  of  wisdom.  The  solution  comes#slowly,  because 
men  collectively  can  only  be  made  to  embrace  principles,  and 
to  act  on  them,  by  the  slow  stupendous  teaching  of  the 
world’s  events.  Men  will  go  on  planting  potatoes,  and 
nothing  else  but  potatoes,  till  a  potato  disease  comes  and 
forces  them  to  find  out  the  advantage  of  a  varied  crop.  Self¬ 
ishness,  stupidity,  sloth,  persist  in  trying  to  adapt  the  world 
to  their  desires,  till  a  time  comes  .when  the  world  mani¬ 
fests  itself  as  too  decidedly  inconvenient  to  them.  Wisdom 
stands  outside  of  man  and  urges  itself  upon  him,  like  the 
marks  of  the  changing  seasons,  before  it  finds  a  home  within 
him,  directs  his  actions,  and  from  the  precious  effects  of 
obedience  begets  a  corresponding  love. 

But  while  still  outside  of  us,  wisdom  often  looks  terrible, 
and  wears  strange  forms,  wrapped  in  the  changing  conditions 
of  a  struggling  world.  It  wears  now  the  form  of  wants  and 
just  demands  in  a  great  multitude  of  British  men :  wants  and 
demands  urged  into  existence  by  the  forces  of  a  maturing 
world.  And  it  is  in  virtue  of  this  —  in  virtue  of  this  pres¬ 
ence  of  wisdom  on  our  side  as  a  mighty  fact,  physical  and 
moral,  which  must  enter  into  and  shape  the  thoughts  and 
actions  of  mankind  — that  we  working-men  have  obtained 
the  suffrage.  Not  because  we  are  an  excellent  multitude, 
but  because  we  are  a  needy  multitude. 

But  now,  for  our  own  part,  we  have  seriously  to  consider 
this  outside  wisdom  which  lies  in  the  supreme  unalterable 
nature  of  things,  and  watch  to  give  it  a  home  within  us  and 
obey  it.  If  the  claims  of  the  unendowed  multitude  of  work- 


230 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


ing-men  hold  within  them  principles  which  must  shape  the 
future,  it  is  not  less  true  that  the  endowed  classes,  in  their 
inheritance  from  the  past,  hold  the  precious  material  without 
which  no  worthy,  noble  future  can  be  moulded.  Many  of  the 
highest  uses  of  life  are  in  their  keeping ;  and  if  privilege  has 
often  been  abused,  it  has  also  been  the  nurse  of  excellence. 
Here  again  we  have  to  submit  ourselves  to  the  great  law  of 
inheritance.  If  we  quarrel  with  the  way  in  which  the  labors 
and  earnings  of  the  past  have  been  preserved  and  handed 
down,  we  are  j«st  as  bigoted,  just  as  narrow,  just  as  wanting 
in  that  religion  which  keeps  an  open  ear  and  an  obedient 
mind  to  the  teachings  of  fact,  as  we  accuse  those  of  being, 
who  quarrel  with  the  new  truths  and  new  needs  which  are 
disclosed  in  the  present.  The  deeper  insight  we  get  into  the 
causes  of  human  trouble,  and  the  ways  by  which  men  are 
made  better  and  happier,  the  less  we  shall  be  inclined  to  the 
unprofitable  spirit  and  practice  of  reproaching  classes  as  such 
in  a  wholesale  fashion.  Not  all  the  evils  of  our  condition 
are  such  as  we  can  justly  blame  others  for ;  and,  I  repeat, 
many  of  them  are  such  as  no  changes  of  institutions  can 
quickly  remedy.  To  discern  between  the  evils  that  energy 
can  remove  and  the  evils  that  patience  must  bear,  makes  the 
difference  between  manliness  and  childishness,  between  good 
sense  and  folly.  And  more  than  that,  without  such  discern¬ 
ment,  seeing  that  we  have  grave  duties  toward  our  own  body 
and  the  country  at  large,  we  can  hardly  escape  acts  of  fatal 
rashness  and  injustice. 

I  am  addressing  a  mixed  assembly  of  workmen,  and  some 
of  you  may  be  as  well  or  better  fitted  than  I  am  to  take  up 
this  office.  But  they  will  not  think  it  amiss  in  me  that  I 
have  tried  to  bring  together  the  considerations  most  likely 
to  be  of  service  to  us  in  preparing  ourselves  for  the  use  of 
our  new  opportunities.  I  have  avoided  touching  on  special 
questions.  The  best  help  toward  judging  well  on  these  is  to 
approach  them  in  the  right  temper  without  vain  expectation, 
and  with  a  resolution  which  is  mixed  with  temperance. 


LEAVES  FROM  A  NOTE-BOOK. 


LEAVES  FROM  A  NOTE-BOOK. 


AUTHORSHIP. 

TO  lay  down  in  the  shape  of  practical  moral  rules  courses 
of  conduct  only  to  be  made  real  by  the  rarest  states  of 
motive  and  disposition,  tends  not  to  elevate,  but  to  degrade 
the  general  standard,  by  turning  that  rare  attainment  from 
an  object  of  admiration  into  an  impossible  prescription, 
against  which  the  average  nature  first  rebels  and  then  flings 
out  ridicule.  It  is  for  art  to  present  images  of  a  lovelier 
order  than  the  actual,  gently  winning  the  affections,  and  so 
determining  the  taste.  But  in  any  rational  criticism  of  the 
time  which  is  meant  to  guide  a  practical  reform,  it  is  idle  to 
insist  that  action  ought  to  be  this  or  that,  without  consider¬ 
ing  how  far  the  outward  conditions  of  such  change  are  present, 
even  supposing  the  inward  disposition  towards  it.  Practi¬ 
cally,  we  must  be  satisfied  to  aim  at  something  short  of  per¬ 
fection,  —  and  at  something  very  much  further  off  it  in  one 
case  than  in  another.  While  the  fundamental  conceptions  of 
morality  seem  as  stationary  through  ages  as  the  laws  of  life, 
so  that  a  moral  manual  written  eighteen  centuries  ago  still 
admonishes  us  that  we  are  low  in  our  attainments,  it  is  quite 
otherwise  with  the  degree  to  which  moral  conceptions  have 
penetrated  the  various  forms  of  social  activity,  and  made 
what  may  be  called  the  special  conscience  of  each  calling,  art, 
or  industry.  While  on  some  points  of  social  duty  public 
opinion  has  reached  a  tolerably  high  standard,  on  others  a 
public  opinion  is  not  yet  born  ;  and  there  are  even  some  func¬ 
tions  and  practices  with  regard  to  which  men  far  above  the 
line  in  honorableness  of  nature  feel  hardly  any  scrupulosity, 


234 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


* 

though  their  consequent  behavior  is  easily  shown  to  be  as  in¬ 
jurious  as  bribery,  or  any  other  slowly  poisonous  procedure 
which  degrades  the  social  vitality. 

Among  those  callings  which  have  not  yet  acquired  any¬ 
thing  near  a  full-grown  conscience  in  the  public  mind  is  Au¬ 
thorship.  Yet  the  changes  brought  about  by  the  spread 
of  instruction  and  the  consequent  struggles  of  an  uneasy 
ambition  are,  or  at  least  might  well  be,  forcing  on  many 
minds  the  need  of  some  regulating  principle  with  regard  to 
the  publication  of  intellectual  products,  which  would  override 
the  rule  of  the  market,  —  a  principle,  that  is,  which  should 
be  derived  from  a  fixing  of  the  author’s  vocation  according  to 
those  characteristics  in  which  it  differs  from  the  other  bread¬ 
winning  professions.  Let  this  be  done,  if  possible,  without 
any  cant,  which  would  carry  the  subject  into  Utopia,  away 
from  existing  needs.  The  guidance  wanted  is  a  clear  notion 
of  what  should  justify  men  and  women  in  assuming  public 
authorship,  and  of  the  way  in  which  they  should  be  deter¬ 
mined  by  what  is  usually  called  success.  But  the  forms  of 
authorship  must  be  distinguished ;  journalism,  for  example, 
carrying  a  necessity  for  that  continuous  production  which 
in  other  kinds  of  writing  is  precisely  the  evil  to  be  fought 
against,  and  judicious  careful  compilation,  which  is  a  great 
public  service,  holding  in  its  modest  diligence  a  guarantee 
against  those  deductions  of  vanity  and  idleness  which  draw 
many  a  young  gentleman  into  reviewing,  instead  of  the  sort¬ 
ing  and  copying  which  his  small  talents  could  not  rise  to 
with  any  vigor  and  completeness. 

A  manufacturer  goes  on  producing  calicoes  as  long  and  as 
fast  as  he  can  find  a  market  for  them  ;  and  in  obeying  this 
indication  of  demand  he  gives  his  factory  its  utmost  useful¬ 
ness  to  the  world  in  general  and  to  himself  in  particular. 
Another  manufacturer  buys  a  new  invention  of  some  light 
kind  likely  to  attract  the  public  fancy,  is  successful  in  find¬ 
ing  a  multitude  who  will  give  their  testers  for  the  transiently 
desirable  commodity,  and  before  the  fashion  is  out,  pockets  a 
considerable  sum  :  the  commodity  was  colored  with  a  green 


LEAVES  FROM  A  NOTE-BOOK. 


235 


which  had  arsenic  in  it  that  damaged  the  factory  workeis  and 
the  purchasers.  What  then  ?  These,  he  contends  (or  does 
not  know  or  care  to  contend),  are  superficial  effects,  which 
it  is  folly  to  dwell  upon  while  we  have  epidemic  diseases 
and  bad  government. 

The  first  manufacturer  we  will  suppose  blameless.  Is  an  au¬ 
thor  simply  on  a  par  with  him,  as  to  the  rules  of  production  ? 

The  author’s  capital  is  his  brain-power,  —  power  of  inven¬ 
tion,  power  of  writing.  The  manufacturer’s  capital,  in  for¬ 
tunate  cases,  is  being  continually  reproduced  and  increased. 
Here  is  the  first  grand  difference  between  the  capital  which 
is  turned  into  calico  and  the  brain  capital  which  is  turned 
into  literature.  The  calico  scarcely  varies  in  appropriate¬ 
ness  of  quality ;  no  consumer  is  in  danger  of  getting  too 
much  of  it,  and  neglecting  his  boots,  hats,  and  flannel 
shirts  in  consequence.  That  there  should  be  large  quantities 
of  the  same  sort  in  the  calico  manufacture  is  an  advantage : 
the  sameness  is  desirable,  and  nobody  is  likely  to  roll  his 
person  in  so  many  folds  of  calico  as  to  become  a  mere  bale 
of  cotton  goods,  and  nullify  his  senses  of  hearing  and  touch, 
while  his  morbid  passion  for  Manchester  shirtings  makes 
him  still  cry  “  More  !  ”  The  wise  manufacturer  gets  richer 
and  richer,  and  the  consumers  he  supplies  have  their  real 
wants  satisfied  and  no  more. 

Let  it  be  taken  as  admitted  that  all  legitimate  social  activ¬ 
ity  must  be  beneficial  to  others  besides  the  agent.  To  write 
prose  or  verse  as  a  private  exercise  and  satisfaction  is  not 
social  activity ;  nobody  is  culpable  for  this  any  more  than  for 
learning  other  people’s  verse  by  heart,  if  he  does  not  neglect 
his  proper  business  in  consequence.  If  the  exercise  made 
him  sillier  or  secretly  more  self-satisfied,  that,  to  be  sure, 
would  be  a  roundabout  way  of  injuring  society ;  for  though 
a  certain  mixture  of  silliness  may  lighten  existence,  we  have 
at  present  more  than  enough. 

But  man  or  woman  who  publishes  writings  inevitably  as¬ 
sumes  the  office  of  teacher  or  influencer  of  the  public  mind. 
Let  him  protest  as  he  will  that  he  only  seeks  to  amuse,  and 


236 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


has  no  pretension  to  do  more  than  while  away  an  hour  of 
leisure  or  weariness,  —  “  the  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day,”  — 
he  can  no  more  escape  influencing  the  moral  taste,  and  with 
it  the  action  of  the  intelligence,  than  a  setter  of  fashions  in 
furniture  and  dress  can  fill  the  shops  with  his  designs  and 
leave  the  garniture  of  persons  and  houses  unaffected  by  his 
industry. 

For  a  man  who  has  a  certain  gift  of  writing  to  say,  “  I  will 
make  the  most  of  it  while  the  public  likes  my  wares,  as  long 
as  the  market  is  open  and  I  am  able  to  supply  it  at  a  money 
profit,  such  profit  being  the  sign  of  liking,”  he  should  have 
a  belief  that  his  wares  have  nothing  akin  to  the  arsenic 
green  in  them,  and  also  that  his  continuous  supply  is  secure 
from  a  degradation  in  quality  which  the  habit  of  consump¬ 
tion  encouraged  in  the  buyers  may  hinder  them  from  mark¬ 
ing  their  sense  of  by  rejection,  so  that  they  complain,  but 
pay,  and  read  while  they  complain.  Unless  he  has  that  be¬ 
lief,  he  is  on  a  level  with  the  manufacturer  who  gets  rich  by 
fancy  wares  colored  with  arsenic  green.  He  really  cares  for 
nothing  but  his  income.  He  carries  on  authorship  on  the 
principle  of  the  gin-palace ;  and  bad  literature  of  the  sort 
called  amusing  is  spiritual  gin. 

A  writer  capable  of  being  popular  can  only  escape  this 
social  culpability  by  first  of  all  getting  a  profound  sense  that 
literature  is  good  for  nothing  if  it  is  not  admirably  good ; 
he  must  detest  bad  literature  too  heartily  to  be  indifferent 
about  producing  it  if  only  other  people  don’t  detest  it.  And 
if  he  has  this  sign  of  the  divine  afflatus  within  him,  he  must 
make  up  his  mind  that  he  must  not  pursue  authorship  as  a 
vocation  with  a  trading  determination  to  get  rich  by  it.  It 
is  in  the  highest  sense  lawful  for  him  to  get  as  good  a  price 
as  he  honorably  can  for  the  best  work  he  is  capable  of ;  but 
not  for  him  to  force  or  hurry  his  production,  or  even  do  over 
again  what  has  already  been  done,  either  by  himself  or 
others,  so  as  to  render  his  work  no  real  contribution,  for  the 
sake  of  bringing  up  his  income  to  the  fancy  pitch.  An  au¬ 
thor  who  would  keep  a  pure  and  noble  conscience,  and  with 


LEAVES  FROM  A  NOTE-BOOK. 


237 


that  a  developing  instead  of  degenerating  intellect  and  taste, 
must  cast  out  of  his  aims  the  aim  to  be  rich.  And  there¬ 
fore  he  must  keep  nis  expenditure  low,  —  he  must  make  for 
himself  no  dire  necessity  to  earn  sums  in  order  to  pay  bills. 

In  opposition  to  this,  it  is  common  to  cite  Walter  Scott’s 
case,  and  cry,  “  Would  the  world  have  got  as  much  innocent 
(and  therefore  salutary)  pleasure  out  of  Scott,  if  he  had  not 
brought  himself  under  the  pressure  of  money-need  ?  ”  I 
think  it  would  —  and  more ;  but  since  it  is  impossible  to 
prove  what  would  have  been,  I  confine  myself  to  replying 
that  Scott  was  not  justified  in  bringing  himself  into  a  posi¬ 
tion  where  severe  consequences  to  others  depended  on  his 
retaining  or  not  retaining  his  mental  competence.  Still  less 
is  Scott  to  be  taken  as  an  example  to  be  followed  in  this 
matter,  even  if  it  were  admitted  that  money-need  served  to 
press  at  once  the  best  and  the  most  work  out  of  him ;  any 
more  than  a  great  navigator  who  has  brought  his  ship  to  port 
in  spite  of  having  taken  a  wrong  and  perilous  route,  is  to  be 
followed  as  to  his  route  by  navigators  who  are  not  yet  as¬ 
certained  to  be  great. 

But  after  the  restraints  and  rules  which  must  guide  the 
acknowledged  author,  whose  power  of  making  a  real  contri¬ 
bution  is  ascertained,  comes  the  consideration,  How  or  on 
what  principle  are  we  to  find  a  check  for  that  troublesome 
disposition  to  authorship  arising  from  the  spread  of  what  is 
called  Education,  which  turns  a  growing  rush  of  vanity  and 
ambition  into  this  current  ?  The  well-taught  —  an  increasing 
number  —  are  almost  all  able  to  write  essays  on  given  themes, 
which  demand  new  periodicals  to  save  them  from  lying  in 
cold  obstruction.  The  ill-taught  —  also  an  increasing  num¬ 
ber —  read  many  books,  seem  to  themselves  able  to  write 
others  surprisingly  like  what  they  read,  and  probably  supe¬ 
rior,  since  the  variations  are  such  as  please  their  own  fancy, 
and  such  as  they  would  have  recommended  to  their  favorite 
authors :  these  ill-taught  persons  are  perhaps  idle  and  want 
to  give  themselves  “  an  object ;  ”  or  they  are  short  of  money, 
and  feel  disinclined  to  get  it  by  a  commoner  kind  of  work ; 


238 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


or  they  find  a  facility  in  putting  sentences  together  which 
gives  them  more  than  a  suspicion  that  they  have  genius, 
which,  if  not  very  cordially  believed  in  by  private  confidants, 
will  be  recognized  by  an  impartial  public;  or,  finally,  they 
observe  that  writing  is  sometimes  well  paid,  and  some¬ 
times  a  ground  of  fame  or  distinction,  and  without  any  use 
of  punctilious  logic,  they  conclude  to  become  writers 
themselves. 

As  to  these  ill-taught  persons,  whatever  medicines  of  a 
spiritual  sort  can  be  found  good  against  mental  emptiness 
and  inflation,  such  medicines  are  needful  for  them.  The  con¬ 
tempt  of  the  world  for  their  productions  only  comes  after 
their  disease  has  wrought  its  worst  effects.  But  what  is  to 
be  said  to  the  well-taught,  who  have  such  an  alarming 
equality  in  their  power  of  writing  “like  a  scholar  and  a 
gentleman  ”  ?  Perhaps  they  too  can  only  be  cured  by  the 
medicine  of  higher  ideals  in  social  duty,  and  by  a  fuller  rep¬ 
resentation  to  themselves  of  the  processes  by  which  the 
general  culture  is  furthered  or  impeded. 

JUDGMENTS  ON  AUTHORS. 

In  endeavoring  to  estimate  a  remarkable  writer  who  aimed 
at  more  than  temporary  influence,  we  have  first  to  consider 
what  was  his  individual  contribution  to  the  spiritual  wealth 
of  mankind.  Had  he  a  new  conception  ?  Did  he  animate 
long-known  but  neglected  truths  with  new  vigor,  and  cast 
fresh  light  on  their  relation  to  other  admitted  truths  ?  Did 
he  impregnate  any  ideas  with  a  fresh  store  of  emotion,  and 
in  this  way  enlarge  the  area  of  moral  sentiment  ?  Did  he, 
by  a  wise  emphasis  here,  and  a  wise  disregard  there,  give  a 
more  useful  or  beautiful  proportion  to  aims  or  motives  ? 
And  even  where  his  thinking  was  most  mixed  with  the  sort 
of  mistake  which  is  obvious  to  the  majority,  as  well  as  that 
which  can  only  be  discerned  by  the  instructed,  or  made  mani¬ 
fest  by  the  progress  of  things,  has  it  that  salt  of  a  noble 
enthusiasm  which  should  rebuke  ou.  critical  discrimination 


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239 


if  its  correctness  is  inspired  with  a  less  admirable  habit  of 
feeling  ? 

This  is  not  the  common  or  easy  course  to  take  in  estimat¬ 
ing  a  modern  writer.  It  requires  considerable  knowledge  of 
what  he  has  himself  done,  as  well  as  of  what  others  have  done 
before  him,  or  what  they  were  doing  contemporaneously ;  it 
requires  deliberate  reflection  as  to  the  degree  in  which  our 
own  prejudices  may  hinder  us  from  appreciating  the  intel¬ 
lectual  or  moral  bearing  of  what  on  a  first  view  offends 
us.  An  easier  course  is  to  notice  some  salient  mistakes, 
and  take  them  as  decisive  of  the  writer’s  incompetence; 
or  to  find  out  that  something  apparently  much  the  same  as 
what  he  has  said  in  some  connection  not  clearly  ascertained 
had  been  said  by  somebody  else,  though  without  great  effect, 
until  this  new  effect  of  discrediting  the  other’s  originality 
had  shown  itself  as  an  adequate  final  cause  ;  or  to  pronounce 
from  the  point  of  view  of  individual  taste  that  this  writer 
for  whom  regard  is  claimed  is  repulsive,  wearisome,  not  to 
be  borne  except  by  those  dull  persons  who  are  of  a  different 
opinion. 

Elder  writers  who  have  passed  into  classics  were  doubtless 
treated  in  this  easy  way  when  they  were  still  under  the  mis¬ 
fortune  of  being  recent, — nay,  are  still  dismissed  with  the 
same  rapidity  of  judgment  by  daring  ignorance.  But  people 
who  think  that  they  have  a  reputation  to  lose  in  the  matter 
of  knowledge  have  looked  into  cyclopaedias  and  histories  of 
philosophy  or  literature,  and  possessed  themselves  of  the 
duly  balanced  epithets  concerning  the  immortals.  They  are 
not  left  to  their  own  unguided  rashness,  or  their  own  un¬ 
guided  pusillanimity.  And  it  is  this  sheeplike  flock  who 
have  no  direct  impressions,  no  spontaneous  delight,  no  genu¬ 
ine  objection  or  self-confessed  neutrality  in  relation  to  the 
writers  become  classic,  —  it  is  these  who  are  incapable  of 
passing  a  genuine  judgment  on.  the  living.  Necessarily. 
The  susceptibility  they  have  kept  active  is  a  susceptibility  to 
their  own  reputation  for  passing  the  right  judgment,  not  the 
susceptibility  to  qualities  in  the  object  of  judgment.  Who 


240 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


learns  to  discriminate  shades  of  color  by  considering  what  Is 
expected  of  him  ?  The  habit  of  expressing  borrowed  judg¬ 
ments  stupefies  the  sensibilities,  which  are  the  only  founda¬ 
tion  of  genuine  judgments,  just  as  the  constant  reading  and 
retailing  of  results  from  other  men’s  observations  through 
the  microscope,  without  ever  looking  through  the  lens  one’s 
self,  is  an  instruction  in  some  truths  and  some  prejudices, 
but  is  no  instruction  in  observant  susceptibility  ;  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  it  breeds  a  habit  of  inward  seeing  according  to  verbal 
statement,  which  dulls  the  power  of  outward  seeing  according 
to  visual  evidence. 

On  this  subject,  as  on  so  many  others,  it  is  difficult  to  strike 
the  balance  between  the  educational  needs  of  passivity  or  re¬ 
ceptivity,  and  independent  selection.  We  should  learn  noth¬ 
ing  without  the  tendency  to  implicit  acceptance ;  but  there 
must  clearly  be  a  limit  to  such  mental  submission,  else  we 
should  come  to  a  standstill.  The  human  mind  would  be  no 
better  than  a  dried  specimen,  representing  an  unchangeable 
type.  When  the  assimilation  of  new  matter  ceases,  decay 
must  begin.  In  a  reasoned  self-restraining  deference  there 
is  as  much  energy  as  in  rebellion ;  but  among  the  less  ca¬ 
pable,  one  must  admit  that  the  superior  energy  is  on  the  side 
of  the  rebels.  And  certainly  a  man  who  dares  to  say  that 
he  finds  an  eminent  classic  feeble  here,  extravagant  there, 
and  in  general  overrated,  may  chance  to  give  an  opinion 
which  has  some  genuine  discrimination  in  it  concerning  a 
new  work  or  a  living  thinker,  —  an  opinion  such  as  can 
hardly  ever  be  got  from  the  reputed  judge  who  is  a  correct 
echo  of  the  most  approved  phrases  concerning  those  who 
have  been  already  canonized. 


STORY-TELLING. 

What  is  the  best  way  of  telling  a  story?  Since  the  stan¬ 
dard  must  be  the  interest  of  the  audience,  there  must  be 
several  or  many  good  ways  rather  than  one  best.  For  we 
get  interested  in  the  stories  life  presents  to  us  through  divers 


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241 


orders  and  modes  of  presentation.  Very  commonly  our  first 
awakening  to  a  desire  of  knowing  a  man’s  past  or  future 
comes  from  our  seeing  him  as  a  stranger  in  some  unusual  or 
pathetic  or  humorous  situation,  or  manifesting  some  remark¬ 
able  characteristics.  We  make  inquiries  in  consequence,  or 
we  become  observant  and  attentive  whenever  opportunities 
of  knowing  more  may  happen  to  present  themselves  without 
our  search.  You  have  seen  a  refined  face  among  the  prison¬ 
ers  picking  tow  in  jail ;  you  afterwards  see  the  same  unfor- 
getable  face  in  a  pulpit :  he  must  be  of  dull  fibre  who  would 
not  care  to  know  more  about  a  life  which  showed  such  con¬ 
trasts,  though  he  might  gather  his  knowledge  in  a  fragmentary 
and  unchronological  way. 

Again,  we  have  heard  much,  or  at  least  something  not 
quite  common,  about  a  man  whom  we  have  never  seen,  and 
lienee  we  look  round  with  curiosity  when  we  are  told  that  he 
is  present ;  whatever  he  says  or  does  before  us  is  charged  with 
a  meaning  due  to  our  previous  hearsay  knowledge  about  him, 
gathered  either  from  dialogue  of  which  he  was  expressly  and 
emphatically  the  subject,  or  from  incidental  remark,  or  from 
general  report  either  in  or  out  of  print. 

These  indirect  ways  of  arriving  at  knowledge  are  always 
the  most  stirring  even  in  relation  to  impersonal  subjects. 
To  see  a  chemical  experiment  gives  an  attractiveness  to  a 
definition  of  chemistry,  and  fills  it  with  a  significance  which 
it  would  never  have  had  without  the  pleasant  shock  of  an 
unusual  sequence,  such  as  the  transformation  of  a  solid  into 
gas,  and  vice  versa.  To  see  a  word  for  the  first  time  either 
as  substantive  or  adjective  in  a  connection  where  we  care 
about  knowing  its  complete  meaning,  is  the  way  to  vivify  its 
meaning  in  our  recollection.  Curiosity  becomes  the  more 
eager  from  the  incompleteness  of  the  first  information.  More- 
,  over,  it  is  in  this  way  that  memory  works  in  its  incidental 
revival  of  events :  some  salient  experience  appears  in  inward 
vision,  and  in  consequence  the  antecedent  facts  are  retraced 
from  what  is  regarded  as  the  beginning  of  the  episode  in 
which  that  experience  made  a  more  or  less  strikingly  memo- 

VOL.  IX.  16 


242 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


rable  part.  “  Ah  !  I  remember  addressing  the  mob  from  the 
hustings  at  Westminster,  — you  would  n’t  have  thought  that  I 
could  ever  have  been  in  such  a  position.  Well,  how  I  came 
there  was  in  this  way ;  ”  and  then  follows  a  retrospective 
narration. 

The  modes  of  telling  a  story  founded  on  these  processes  of 
outward  and  inward  life  derive  their  effectiveness  from  the 
superior  mastery  of  images  and  pictures  in  grasping  the  at¬ 
tention,  —  or,  one  might  say  with  more  fundamental  accuracy, 
from  the  fact  that  our  earliest,  strongest  impressions,  our 
most  intimate  convictions,  are  simply  images  added  to  more 
or  less  of  sensation.  These  are  the  primitive  instruments  of 
thought.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  that  early  poetry  took 
this  way,  —  telling  a  daring  deed,  a  glorious  achievement, 
without  caring  for  what  went  before.  The  desire  for  orderly 
narration  is  a  later,  more  reflective  birth.  The  presence  of 
the  Jack  in  the  box  affects  every  child:  it  is  the  more  reflec¬ 
tive  lad,  the  miniature  philosopher,  who  wants  to  know  how 
he  got  there. 

The  only  stories  life  presents  to  us  in  an  orderly  way  are 
those  of  our  autobiography,  or  the  career  of  our  companions 
from  our  childhood  upwards,  or  perhaps  of  our  own  children. 
But  it  is  a  great  art  to  make  a  connected  strictly  relevant 
narrative  of  such  careers  as  we  can  recount  from  the  begin¬ 
ning.  In  these  cases  the  sequence  of  associations  is  almost 
sure  to  overmaster  the  sense  of  proportion.  Such  narratives 
ab  ovo  are  summer’s-day  stories  for  happy  loungers  ;  not  the 
cup  of  self-forgetting  excitement  to  the  busy  who  can  snatch 
an  hour  of  entertainment. 

But  the  simple  opening  of  a  story  with  a  date  and  neces¬ 
sary  account  of  places  and  people,  passing  on  quietly  towards 
the  more  rousing  elements  of  narrative  and  dramatic  presen¬ 
tation,  without  need  of  retrospect,  has  its  advantages,  which, 
have  to  be  measured  by  the  nature  of  the  story.  Spirited 
narrative,  without  more  than  a  touch  of  dialogue  here  *md 
there,  may  be  made  eminently  interesting,  and  is  suited  to 
the  novelette.  Examples  of  its  charm  are  seen  in  the  ■ftkert 


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243 


tales  in  which  the  French  have  a  mastery  never  reached  by 
the  English,  who  usually  demand  coarser  flavors  than  are 
given  by  that  delightful  gayety  which  is  well  described  by 
La  Fontaine  1  as  not  anything  that  provokes  fits  of  laughter, 
but  a  certain  charm,  an  agreeable  mode  of  handling,  which 
lends  attractiveness  to  all  subjects,  even  the  most  serious. 
And  it  is  this  sort  of  gayety  which  plays  around  the  best 
French  novelettes.  But  the  opening  chapters  of  the  “  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  ”  are  as  fine  as  anything  that  can  be  done  in 
this  way. 

Why  should  a  story  not  be  told  in  the  most  irregular 
fashion  that  an  author’s  idiosyncrasy  may  prompt,  provided 
that  he  gives  us  what  we  can  enjoy  ?  The  objections  to 
Sterne’s  wild  way  of  telling  “  Tristram  Shandy  ”  lie  more 
solidly  in  the  quality  of  the  interrupting  matter  than  in  the 
fact  of  interruption.  The  dear  public  would  do  well  to  re¬ 
flect  that  they  are  often  bored  from  the  want  of  flexibility  in 
their  own  minds.  They  are  like  the  topers  of  “  one  liquor.” 

HISTORIC  IMAGINATION. 

The  exercise  of  a  veracious  imagination  in  historical  pictur¬ 
ing  seems  to  be  capable  of  a  development  that  might  help  the 
judgment  greatly  with  regard  to  present  and  future  events. 
By  veracious  imagination,  I  mean  the  working  out  ;n  detail 
of  the  various  steps  by  which  a  political  or  social  change 
was  reached,  using  all  extant  evidence  and  supplying  defi¬ 
ciencies  by  careful  analogical  creation.  How  triumphant 
opinions  originally  spread ;  how  institutions  arose ;  what 
were  the  conditions  of  great  inventions,  discoveries,  or  theo¬ 
retic  conceptions  ;  what  circumstances  affecting  individual 
lots  are  attendant  on  the  decay  of  long-established  systems, 
—  all  these  grand  elements  of  history  require  the  illumination 
of  special  imaginative  treatment.  But  effective  truth  in  this 

l“Je  n’appelle  pas  gavete  ce  qui  exc  ite  le  rire,  niais  un  certain  charrne, 
nn  air  agreeable  qu’on  peut  donner  a  toutes  sortes  de  eujets,  rnesme  les  plug 

•erieux.”  —  Preface  to  Fable*. 


244 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


application  of  art  requires  freedom  from  the  vulgar  coercion 
of  conventional  plot,  which  is  become  hardly  of  higher  in¬ 
fluence  on  imaginative  representation  than  a  detailed  “order” 
for  a  picture  sent  by  a  rich  grocer  to  an  eminent  painter,  — 
allotting  a  certain  portion  of  the  canvas  to  a  rural  scene, 
another  to  a  fashionable  group,  with  a  request  for  a  murder 
in  the  middle  distance,  and  a  little  comedy  to  relieve  it.  A 
slight  approximation  to  the  veracious  glimpses  of  history 
artistically  presented,  which  I  am  indicating,  bub  applied  only 
to  an  incident  of  contemporary  life,  is  “  Un  Paquet  de 
Lettres  ”  by  Gustave  Droz.  For  want  of  such  real,  minute 
vision  of  how  changes  come  about  in  the  past,  we  fall  into 
ridiculously  inconsistent  estimates  of  actual  movements,  con¬ 
demning  in  the  present  what  we  belaud  in  the  past,  and  pro¬ 
nouncing  impossible  processes  that  have  been  repeated  again 
and  again  in  the  historical  preparation  of  the  very  system 
under  which  we  live.  A  false  kind  of  idealization  dulls  our 
perception  of  the  meaning  in  words  when  they  relate  to  past 
events  which  have  had  a  glorious  issue  ;  for  lack  of  compari¬ 
son  no  warning  image  rises  to  check  scorn  of  the  very  phrases 
which  in  other  associations  are  consecrated. 

Utopian  pictures  help  the  reception  of  ideas  as  to  con¬ 
structive  results,  but  hardly  so  much  as  a  vivid  presentation 
of  how  results  have  been  actually  brought  about,  especially 
in  religious  and  social  change.  And  there  is  the  pathos,  the 
heroism,  often  accompanying  the  decay  and  final  struggle  of 
old  systems,  which  has  not  had  its  share  of  tragic  commemo¬ 
ration.  What  really  took  place  in  and  around  Constantine 
before,  upon,  and  immediately  after  his  declared  conversion  ? 
Could  a  momentary  flash  be  thrown  on  Eusebius  in  his  say¬ 
ings  and  doings  as  an  ordinary  man  in  bishop’s  garments? 
Or  on  J ulian  and  Libanius  ?  There  has  been  abundant  writ¬ 
ing  on  such  great  turning-points,  but  not  such  as  serves  to 
instruct  the  imagination  in  true  comparison.  I  want  some¬ 
thing  different  from  the  abstract  treatment  which  belongs  to 
grave  history  from  a  doctrinal  point  of  view,  and  something 
different  from  the  schemed  picturesqueness  of  ordinary 


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245 


historical  fiction.  I  want  brief,  severely  conscientious  repro¬ 
ductions,  in  their  concrete  incidents,  of  pregnant  movements 

in  the  past. 


VALUE  IN  ORIGINALITY. 

The  supremacy  given  in  European  cultures  to  the  litera¬ 
tures  of  Greece  and  Rome  has  had  an  effect  almost  equal  to 
that  of  a  common  religion  in  binding  the  Western  nations 
together.  It  is  foolish  to  be  forever  complaining  of  the  con¬ 
sequent  uniformity,  as  if  there  were  an  endless  power  of 
originality  in  the  human  mind.  Great  and  precious  origina¬ 
tion  must  always  be  comparatively  rare,  and  can  only  exist 
on  condition  of  a  wide,  massive  uniformity.  When  a  multi¬ 
tude  of  men  have  learned  to  use  the  same  language  in  speech 
and  writing,  then  and  then  only  can  the  greatest  masters  of 
language  arise.  For  in  what  does  their  mastery  consist  ? 
They  use  words  which  are  already  a  familiar  medium  of 
understanding  and  sympathy  in  such  a  way  as  greatly  to  en¬ 
large  the  understanding  and  sympathy.  Originality  of  this 
order  changes  the  wild  grasses  into  world-feeding  grain. 
Idiosyncrasies  are  pepper  and  spices  of  questionable  aroma. 

TO  THE  PROSAIC  ALL  THINGS  ARE  PROSAIC. 

« Is  the  time  we  live  in  prosaic  ?  ”  “  That  depends  :  it 

must  certainly  be  prosaic  to  one  whose  mind  takes  a  prosaic 
stand  in  contemplating  it.”  “  But  it  is  precisely  the  most 
.  poetic  minds  that  most  groan  over  the  vulgarity  of  the  pres¬ 
ent,  its  degenerate  sensibility  to  beauty,  eagerness  for  mate¬ 
rialistic  explanation,  noisy  triviality.”  “  Perhaps  they  would 
have  had  the  same  complaint  to  make  about  the  age  of  Eliza¬ 
beth,  if,  living  then,  they  had  fixed  their  attention  on  its 
more  sordid  elements,  or  had  been  subject  to  the  grating  in¬ 
fluence  of  its  every-day  meannesses,  and  had  sought  refuge 
from  them  in  the  contemplation  of  whatever  suited  their 
taste  in  a  former  age.” 


246 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


“DEAR  RELIGIOUS  LOVE” 

We  get  our  knowledge  of  perfect  Love  by  glimpses  and  in 
fragments  chiefly,  —  the  rarest  only  among  us  knowing  what 
it  is  to  worship  and  caress,  reverence  and  cherish,  divide  our 
bread  and  mingle  our  thoughts  at  one  and  the  same  time, 
under  inspiration  of  the  same  object.  Finest  aromas  will  so 
often  leave  the  fruits  to  which  they  are  native  and  cling 
elsewhere,  leaving  the  fruit  empty  of  all  but  its  coarser 
structure ! 


WE  MAKE  OUR  OWN  PRECEDENTS. 

In  the  times  of  national  mixture,  when  modern  Europe  was, 
as  one  may  say,  a-brewing,  it  was  open  to  a  man  who  did  not 
like  to  be  judged  by  the  Roman  law  to  choose  which  of  cer¬ 
tain  other  codes  he  would  be  tried  by.  So,  in  our  own  times, 
they  who  openly  adopt  a  higher  rule  than  their  neighbors  do 
thereby  make  act  of  choice  as  to  the  laws  and  precedents  by 
which  they  shall  be  approved  or  condemned ;  and  thus  it  may 
happen  that  we  see  a  man  morally  pilloried  for  a  very  custo¬ 
mary  deed,  and  yet  having  no  right  to  complain,  inasmuch  as 
in  his  foregoing  deliberative  course  of  life  he  had  referred 
himself  to  the  tribunal  of  those  higher  conceptions,  before 
which  such  a  deed  is  without  question  condemnable. 

% 

BIRTH  OF  TOLERANCE. 

Tolerance  first  comes  through  equality  of  struggle,  as  in 
the  case  of  Arianism  and  Catholicism  in  the  early  times,  — 
Valens,  Eastern  and  Arian,  Valentinian,  Western  and  Catho¬ 
lic,  alike  publishing  edicts  of  tolerance  ;  or  it  comes  from  a 
common  need  of  relief  from  an  oppressive  predominance,  as 
when  James  II.  published  his  Act  of  Tolerance  towards  non- 
Anglicans,  being  forced  into  liberality  towards  the  Dissenters 
by  the  need  to  get  it  for  the  Catholics.  Community  of  in¬ 
terest  is  the  root  of  justice ;  community  of  suffering,  the  root 
of  pity ;  community  of  joy,  the  root  of  love. 


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247 


Enveloped  in  a  common  mist,  we  seem  to  walk  in  clear¬ 
ness  ourselves,  and  behold  only  the  mist  that  enshrouds 
others. 

Sympathetic  people  are  often  incommunicative  about 
themselves  :  they  give  back  reflected  images  which  hide  their 
own  depths. 

The  pond  said  to  the  ocean,  “  Why  do  you  rage  so  ?  Tin- 
wind  is  not  so  very  violent,  —  nay,  it  is  already  fallen.  Loo1* 
at  me.  I  rose  into  no  foaming  waves,  and  am  already  smooth 
again.” 

FELIX  QUI  NON  POTUIT. 

Many  feel  themselves  very  confidently  on  safe  ground 
when  they  say :  It  must  be  good  for  man  to  know  the  Truth, 
But  it  is  clearly  not  good  for  a  particular  man  to  know  some 
particular  truth,  as  irremediable  treachery  in  one  whom  he 
cherishes,  —  better  that  he  should  die  without  knowing  it. 

Of  scientific  truth,  is  it  not  conceivable  that  some  facts  as 
to  the  tendency  of  things  affecting  the  final  destination  of 
the  race  might  be  more  hurtful  when  they  had  entered  into 
the  human  consciousness  than  they  would  have  been  if  they 
had  remained  purely  external  in  their  activity  ? 

DIVINE  GRACE  A  REAL  EMANATION. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  impotent  or  neutral  deity,  if 
the  deity  be  really  believed  in,  and  contemplated  either  in 
prayer  or  meditation.  Every  object  of  thought  reacts  on  the 
mind  that  conceives  it,  still  more  on  that  which  habitually 
contemplates  it.  In  this  we  may  be  said  to  solicit  help  from 
a  generalization  or  abstraction.  Wordsworth  had  this  truth 
in  his  consciousness  when  he  wrote  (in  the  Prelude),  — 

“Nor  general  truths,  which  are  themselves  a  sort 
Of  elements  and  agents,  Under-powers, 

Subordinate  helpers  of  the  living  mind  ”  — 

not  indeed  precisely  in  the  same  relation,  but  with  a  meaning 
which  involves  that  wider  moral  influence. 


248 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


“A  FINE  EXCESS.’*  — FEELING  IS  ENERGY. 

One  can  hardly  insist  too  much,  in  the  present  stage  of 
thinking,  on  the  efficacy  of  feeling  in  stimulating  to  ardent 
co-operation,  quite  apart  from  the  conviction  that  such  co¬ 
operation  is  needed  for  the  achievement  of  the  end  in  view. 
Just  as  hatred  will  vent  itself  in  private  curses  no  longer 
believed  to  have  any  potency,  and  joy,  in  private  singing  far 
out  among  the  woods  and  fields,  so  sympathetic  feeling  can 
only  be  satisfied  by  joining  in  the  action  which  expresses  it, 
though  the  added  “  Bravo !  ”  the  added  push,  the  added 
penny,  is  no  more  than  a  grain  of  dust  on  a  rolling  mass. 
When  students  take  the  horses  out  of  a  political  hero’s  car¬ 
riage,  and  draw  him  home  by  the  force  of  their  own  muscle, 
the  struggle  in  each  is  simply  to  draw  or  push,  without  con¬ 
sideration  whether  his  place  would  not  be  as  well  filled  by 
somebody  else,  or  whether  his  one  arm  be  really  needful  to 
the  effect.  It  is  under  the  same  inspiration  that  abundant 
help  rushes  towards  the  scene  of  a  fire,  rescuing  imperilled 
lives,  and  laboring  with  generous  rivalry  in  carrying  buckets. 
So  the  old  blind  King  John  of  Bohemia  at  the  battle  of 
Crecy  begged  his  vassals  to  lead  him  into  the  fight  that  he 
might  strike  a  good  blow,  though  his  own  stroke,  possibly  fa¬ 
tal  to  himself,  coaid  not  turn  by  a  hair’s-breadth  the  imperious 
course  of  victory. 

The  question,  “  Of  what  use  is  it  for  me  to  work  towards 
an  end  confessedly  good  ?  ”  comes  from  that  sapless  kind  of 
reasoning  which  is  falsely  taken  for  a  sign  of  supreme  mental 
activity,  but  is  really  due  to  languor,  or  incapability  of  that 
mental  grasp  which  makes  objects  strongly  present,  and  to  a 
lack  of  sympathetic  emotion.  In  the  “  Spanish  Gypsy  ” 
Fedalma  says,  — 

“  The  grandest  death !  to  die  in  vain  —  for  Love 
Greater  than  sways  the  forces  of  the  world  ” 1  — 

1  Vide  what  Demosthenes  says  (“  De  Corona”)  about  Athens  pursuing 
the  same  course,  though  she  had  known  from  the  beginning  that  her  heroic 
resistance  would  be  in  vain. 


LEAVES  FROM  A  NOTE-BOOK. 


249 


referring  to  the  image  of  the  disciples  throwing  themselves, 
consciously  in  vain,  on  the  Roman  spears.  I  really  believe 
and  mean  this  —  not  as  a  rule  of  general  action,  but  as  a 
possible  grand  instance  of  determining  energy  in  human 
sympathy,  which  even  in  particular  cases,  where  it  has  only 
a  magnificent  futility,  is  more  adorable,  or  as  we  say  divine, 
than  unpitying  force,  or  than  a  prudent  calculation  of  results. 
Perhaps  it  is  an  implicit  joy  in  the  resources  of  our  human 
nature  which  has  stimulated  admiration  for  acts  of  self- 
sacrifice  which  are  vain  as  to  their  immediate  end.  Marcus 
Curtius  was  probably  not  imagined  as  concluding  to  himself 
that  he  and  his  horse  would  so  fill  up  the  gap  as  to  make  a 
smooth  terra  Jirma.  The  impulse  and  act  made  the  heroism, 
not  the  correctness  of  adaptation.  No  doubt  the  passionate 
inspiration  which  prompts  and  sustains  a  course  of  self- 
sacrificing  labor  in  the  light  of  soberly  estimated  results  gath¬ 
ers  the  highest  title  to  our  veneration,  and  makes  the  supreme 
heroism.  But  the  generous  leap  of  impulse  is  needed  too,  to 
swell  the  flood  of  sympathy  in  us  beholders,  that  we  may 
not  fall  completely  under  the  mastery  of  calculation,  which 
in  its  turn  may  fail  of  ends  for  want  of  energy  got  from 
ardor.  We  have  need  to  keep  the  sluices  open  for  possible 
influxes  of  the  rarer  sort. 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  THEOPHRASTUS  SUCH 


LOOKING  INWARD. 


T  is  my  habit  to  give  an  account  to  myself  of  the  charac* 


-L  ters  L  meet  with  ;  can  I  give  any  true  account  of  my 
own  ?  I  am  a  bachelor,  without  domestic  distractions  of  any 
sort,  and  have  all  my  life  been  an  attentive  companion  to 
myself,  flattering  my  nature  agreeably  on  plausible  occasions, 
reviling  it  rather  bitterly  when  it  mortified  me ;  and  in  gen¬ 
eral  remembering  its  doings  and  sufferings  with  a  tenacity 
which  is  too  apt  to  raise  surprise,  if  not  disgust,  at  the  care¬ 
less  inaccuracy  of  my  acquaintances,  who  impute  to  me  opin¬ 
ions  I  never  held,  express  their  desire  to  convert  me  to  my 
favorite  ideas,  forget  whether  I  have  ever  been  to  the  East, 
and  are  capable  of  being  three  several  times  astonished  at 
my  never  having  told  them  before  of  my  accident  in  the 
Alps,  causing  me  the  nervous  shock  which  has  ever  since 
notably  diminished  my  digestive  powers.  Surely  I  ought  to 
know  myself  better  than  these  indifferent  outsiders  can 
know  me ;  nay,  better  even  than  my  intimate  friends,  to 
whom  I  have  never  breathed  those  items  of  my  inward  ex¬ 
perience  which  have  chiefly  shaped  my  life. 

Yet  I  have  often  been  forced  into  the  reflection  that  even 
the  acquaintances  who  are  as  forgetful  of  my  biography  and 
tenets  as  they  would  be  if  I  were  a  dead  philosopher,  are 
probably  aware  of  certain  points  in  me  which  may  not  be  in¬ 
cluded  in  my  most  active  suspicion.  We  sing  an  exquisite 
passage  out  of  tune,  and  innocently  repeat  it  for  the  greater 
pleasure  of  our  hearers.  Who  can  be  aware  of  what  his  for¬ 
eign  accent  is  in  the  ears  of  a  native  ?  And  how  can  a  man 
be  conscious  of  that  dull  perception  which  causes  him  to 


254 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


mistake  altogether  what  will  make  him  agreeable  uo  a  par¬ 
ticular  woman,  and  to  persevere  eagerly  in  a  behavior  which 
she  is  privately  recording  against  him  ?  I  have  had  some 
confidences,  from  my  female  friends,  as  to  their  opinion  of 
other  men,  whom  1  have  observed  trying  to  make  themselves 
amiable ;  and  it  has  occurred  to  me  that,  though  I  can  hardly 
be  so  blundering  as  Lippus,  and  the  rest  of  those  mistaken 
candidates  for  favor  whom  I  have  seen  ruining  their  chance 
by  a  too  elaborate  personal  canvass,  I  must  still  come  under 
the  common  fatality  of  mankind,  and  share  the  liability  to 
be  absurd  without  knowing  that  I  am  absurd.  It  is  in  the 
nature  of  foolish  reasonings  to  seem  good  to  the  foolish  rea- 
soner.  Hence,  with  all  possible  study  of  myself,  with  all 
possible  effort  to  escape  from  the  pitiable  illusion  which 
makes  men  laugh,  shriek,  or  curl  the  lip  at  Folly’s  likeness, 
m  total  unconsciousness  that  it  resembles  themselves,  I  am 
obliged  to  recognize  that,  while  there  are  secrets  in  me  un¬ 
guessed  by  others,  these  others  have  certain  items  of  knowl¬ 
edge  about  the  extent  of  my  powers,  and  the  figure  I  make 
with  them,  which  in  turn  are  secrets  unguessed  by  me. 
When  I  was  a  lad  I  danced  a  hornpipe  with  arduous  scru¬ 
pulosity,  and  while  suffering  pangs  of  pallid  shyness,  was 
yet  proud  of  my  superiority  as  a  dancing-pupil,  imagining 
for  myself  a  high  place  in  the  estimation  of  beholders ;  but 
I  can  now  picture  the  amusement  they  had  in  the  incongruity 
of  my  solemn  face  and  ridiculous  legs.  What  sort  of  horn¬ 
pipe  am  I  dancing  now  ? 

Thus,  if  I  laugh  at  you,  0  fellow-men !  if  I  trace  with 
curious  interest  your  labyrinthine  self-delusions,  note  the 
inconsistencies  in  your  zealous  adhesions,  and  smile  at  your 
helpless  endeavors  in  a  rashly  chosen  part,  it  is  not  that  I 
feel  myself  aloof  from  you  ;  the  more  intimately  I  seem  to  dis¬ 
cern  your  weaknesses,  the  stronger  to  me  is  the  proof  that  I 
share  them.  How  otherwise  could  I  get  the  discernment  ?  — 
for  even  what,  we  are  averse  to,  what  we  vow  not  to  en¬ 
tertain,  must  have  shaped  or  shadowed  itself  within  us  as 
a  possibility,  before  we  can  think  of  exorcising  it.  No  man 


LOOKING  INWARD. 


255 


can  know  his  brother  simply  as  a  spectator.  Dear  blunderers, 
1  am  one  of  you.  I  wince  at  the  fact,  but  I  am  not  ignorant 
of  it,  that  I  too  am  laughable  on  unsuspected  occasions  ■,  nay, 
in  the  very  tempest  and  whirlwind  of  my  anger,  I  include 
myself  under  my  own  indignation.  If  the  human  race  has  a 
bad  reputation,  I  perceive  that  I  cannot  escape  being  com¬ 
promised.  And  thus,  while  I  carry  in  myself  the  key  to 
other  men’s  experience,  it  is  only  by  observing  others  that  I 
can  so  far  correct  my  self-ignorance  as  to  arrive  at  the  cer¬ 
tainty  that  I  am  liable  to  commit  myself  unawares,  and  to 
manifest  some  incompetency,  which  I  know  no  more  of  than 
the  blind  man  knows  of  his  image  in  the  glass. 

Is  it  then  possible  to  describe  one’s  self  at  once  faithfully 
and  fully  ?  In  all  autobiography  there  is,  nay,  ought  to  be, 
an  incompleteness  which  may  have  the  effect  of  falsity.  We 
are  each  of  us  bound  to  reticence  by  the  piety  we  owe  to 
those  who  have  been  nearest  to  us  and  have  had  a  mingled 
influence  over  our  lives,  by  the  fellow-feeling  which  should 
restrain  us  from  turning  our  volunteered  and  picked  confes¬ 
sions  into  an  act  of  accusation  against  others,  who  have  no 
chance  of  vindicating  themselves ;  and  most  of  all  by  that 
reverence  for  the  higher  efforts  of  our  common  nature,  which 
commands  us  to  bury  its  lowest  fatalities,  its  invincible  rem¬ 
nants  of  the  brute,  its  most  agonizing  struggles  with  tempts 
tion,  in  unbroken  silence.  But  the  incompleteness  which 
comes  of  self-ignorance  may  be  compensated  by  self-betrayal. 
A  man  who  is  affected  to  tears  in  dwelling  on  the  generosity 
of  his  own  sentiments  makes  me  aware  of  several  things  not 
included  under  those  terms.  Who  has  sinned  more  against 
those  three  duteous  reticences  than  Jean  Jacques  ?  \  et 

half  our  impressions  of  his  character  come  not  from  what 
he  means  to  convey,  but  from  what  he  unconsciously  enables 
us  to  discern. 

This  naive  veracity  of  self-presentation  is  attainable  by 
the  slenderest  talent  on  the  most  trivial  occasions.  The 
least  lucid  and  impressive  of  orators  may  be  perfectly  suc¬ 
cessful  in  showing  us  the  weak  points  of  his  grammar. 


256 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


Hence  I  too  may  be  so  far  like  Jean  Jacques  as  to  commu¬ 
nicate  more  than  I  am  aware  of.  I  am  not,  indeed,  writing 
an  autobiography,  or  pretending  to  give  an  unreserved  de¬ 
scription  of  myself,  but  only  offering  some  slight  confessions 
in  an  apologetic  light,  to  indicate  that  if  in  my  absence  you 
dealt  as  freely  with  my  unconscious  weaknesses  as  I  have 
dealt  with  the  unconscious  weaknesses  of  others,  I  should 
not  feel  myself  warranted  by  common-sense  in  regarding 
your  freedom  of  observation  as  an  exceptional  case  of  evil¬ 
speaking,  or  as  malignant  interpretation  of  a  character 
which  really  offers  no  handle  to  just  objection,  or  even  as 
an  unfair  use,  for  your  amusement,  of  disadvantages  which, 
since  they  are  mine,  should  be  regarded  with  more  than 
ordinary  tenderness.  Let  me  at  least  try  to  feel  myself  in 
the  ranks  with  my  fellow-men.  It  is  true,  that  I  would 
rather  not  hear  either  your  well-founded  ridicule  or  your 
judicious  strictures.  Though  not  averse  to  finding  fault 
with  myself,  and  conscious  of  deserving  lashes,  I  like  to  keep 
the  scourge  in  my  own  discriminating  hand.  I  never  felt 
myself  sufficiently  meritorious  to  like  being  hated,  as  a  proof 
of  my  superiority,  or  so  thirsty  for  improvement  as  to  desire 
that  all  my  acquaintances  should  give  me  their  candid  opin¬ 
ion  of  me.  I  really  do  not  want  to  learn  from  my  enemies  ; 
I  prefer  having  none  to  learn  from.  Instead  of  being  glad 
when  men  use  me  despitefully,  I  wish  they  would  behave 
better,  and  find  a  more  amiable  occupation  for  their  intervals 
of  business.  In  brief,  after  a  close  intimacy  with  myself  for 
a  longer  period  than  I  choose  to  mention,  I  find  within  me 
a  permanent  longing  for  approbation,  sympathy,  and  love. 

Yet  I  am  a  bachelor,  and  the  person  I  loved  best  has  never 
loved  me,  or  known  that  I  loved  her.  Though  continually 
in  society,  and  caring  about  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  my 
neighbors,  I  feel  myself,  so  far  as  my  personal  lot  is  con¬ 
cerned,  uncared  for  and  alone.  “Your  own  fault,  my  dear 
fellow  !  ”  said  Minutius  Felix,  one  day  that  I  had  incau¬ 
tiously  mentioned  this  uninteresting  fact.  And  he  was 
right,  in  senses  other  than  he  intended-  Why  should  I 


LOOKING  INWARD. 


257 


e  xpect  to  be  admired,  and  have  my  company  doted  on  ? 
1  have  done  no  services  to  my  country  beyond  those  of  every 
peaceable,  orderly  citizen ;  and  as  to  intellectual  contribution 
my  only  published  work  was  a  failure,  so  that  I  am  spokei 
of  to  inquiring  beholders  as  “  the  author  of  a  book  you  kav* 
probably  not  seen.”  (The  work  was  a  humorous  romance, 
unique  in  its  kind,  and  I  am  told  is  much  tasted  in  a  Cher¬ 
okee  translation,  where  the  jokes  are  rendered  with  all  the 
serious  eloquence  characteristic  of  the  red  races.)  This 
sort  of  distinction,  as  a  writer  nobody  is  likely  to  have  read, 
can  hardly  counteract  an  indistinctness  in  my  articulation, 
which  the  best-intentioned  loudness  will  not  remedy.  Then, 
in  some  quarters,  my  awkward  feet  are  against  me,  the  length 
of  my  upper  lip,  and  an  inveterate  way  I  have  of  walking 
with  my  head  foremost  and  my  chin  projecting.  One  can 
become  only  too  well  aware  of  such  things  by  looking  in  the 
glass,  or  in  that  other  mirror,  held  up  to  nature  in  the  frank 
opinions  of  street-boys,  or  of  our  Free  People  travelling  by 
excursion-train ;  and  no  doubt  they  account  for  the  half- 
suppressed  smile  which  I  have  observed  on  some  fair  faces 
when  I  have  first  been  presented  before  them.  This  direct- 
perspective  judgment  is  not  to  be  argued  against.  But  I  am 
tempted  to  remonstrate  when  the  physical  points  I  have 
mentioned  are  apparently  taken  to  warrant  unfavorable  in¬ 
ferences  concerning  my  mental  quickness.  With  all  the 
increasing  uncertainty  which  modern  progress  has  thrown 
over  the  relations  of  mind  and  body,  it  seems  tolerably  clear 
that  wit  cannot  be  seated  in  the  upper  lip,  and  that  the  bal¬ 
ance  of  the  haunches  in  walking  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
subtle  discrimination  of  ideas.  Yet  strangers  evidently  do 
not  expect  me  to  make  a  clever  observation,  and  my  good 
things  are  as  unnoticed  as  if  they  were  anonymous  pictures. 
I  have  indeed  had  the  mixed  satisfaction  of  finding  that 
when  they  were  appropriated  by  some  one  else  they  were 
found  remarkable,  and  even  brilliant.  It  is  to  be  borne  iu 
mind  that  I  am  not  rich,  have  neither  stud  nor  cellar,  and 
no  very  high  connections  such  as  give  to  a  look  of  imbecility 


VOL.  IX. 


258 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 

a  certain  prestige  of  inheritance  through  a  titled  line ;  just 
as  “  the  Austrian  lip  ”  confers  a  grandeur  of  historical  asso¬ 
ciations  on  a  kind  of  feature  which  might  make  us  reject  an 
advertising  footman.  I  have  now  and  then  done  harm  to  a 
good  cause  by  speaking  for  it  in  public,  and  have  discovered 
too  late  that  my  attitude  on  the  occasion  would  more  suit¬ 
ably  have  been  that  of  negative  beneficence.  Is  it  really  to 
the  advantage  of  an  opinion  that  I  should  be  known  to  hold 
it  ?  And  as  to  the  force  of  my  arguments,  that  is  a  second¬ 
ary  consideration  with  audiences  who  have  given  a  new 
scope  to  the  ex  pede  Herculem  principle,  and  from  awkward 
feet  infer  awkward  fallacies.  Once,  when  zeal  lifted  me  on 
my  legs,  I  distinctly  heard  an  enlightened  artisan  remark, 
“  Here ’s  a  rum  cut !  ”  —  and  doubtless  he  reasoned  in  the 
same  way  as  the  elegant  Glycera,  when  she  politely  puts  on 
an  air  of  listening  to  me,  but  elevates  her  eyebrows  and 
chills  her  glance  in  sign  of  predetermined  neutrality ;  both 
have  their  reasons  for  judging  the  quality  of  my  speech 
beforehand. 

This  sort  of  reception  to  a  man  of  affectionate  disposition, 
who  has  also  the  innocent  vanity  of  desiring  to  be  agreeable, 
has  naturally  a  depressing  if  not  embittering  tendency ;  and 
in  early  life  I  began  to  seek  for  some  consoling  point  of  view, 
some  warrantable  method  of  softening  the  hard  peas  I  had 
to  walk  on,  some  comfortable  fanaticism  which  might  supply 
the  needed  self-satisfaction.  At  one  time  I  dwelt  much  on 
the  idea  of  compensation,  —  trying  to  believe  that  I  was  all 
the  wiser  for  my  bruised  vanity,  that  I  had  the  higher  place 
in  the  true  spiritual  scale,  and  even  that  a  day  might  come 
when  some  visible  triumph  would  place  me  in  the  French 
heaven  of  having  the  laughers  on  my  side.  But  I  presently 
perceived  that  this  was  a  very  odious  sort  of  self-cajolery. 
Was  it  in  the  least  true  that  I  was  wiser  than  several  of  my 
friends  who  made  an  excellent  figure,  and  were  perhaps  praised 
a  little  beyond  their  merit  ?  Is  the  ugly,  unready  man  in  the 
corner,  outside  the  current  of  conversation,  really  likely  to 
have  a  fairer  view  of  things  than  the  agreeable  talker,  whose 


LOOKING  INWARD. 


259 


success  strikes  the  unsuccessful  as  a  repulsive  example  of 
forwardness  and  conceit  ?  And  as  to  compensation  in  future 
years,  would  the  fact  that  I  myself  got  it  reconcile  me  to  an 
order  of  things  in  which  I  could  see  a  multitude  with  as  bad 
a  share  as  mine,  who,  instead  of  getting  their  corresponding 
compensation,  were  getting  beyond  the  reach  of  it  in  old  age  ? 
What  could  be  more  contemptible  than  the  mood  of  mind 
which  makes  a  man  measure  the  justice  of  divine  or  human 
law  by  the  agreeableness  of  his  own  shadow  and  the  ample 
satisfaction  of  his  own  desires  ? 

I  dropped  a  form  of  consolation  which  seemed  to  be  en¬ 
couraging  me  in  the  persuasion  that  my  discontent  was  the 
chief  evil  in  the  world,  and  my  benefit  the  soul  of  good  in 
that  evil.  May  there  not  be  at  least  a  partial  release  from 
the  imprisoning  verdict  that  a  man’s  philosophy  is  the  for¬ 
mula  of  his  personality  ?  In  certain  branches  of  science  we 
can  ascertain  our  personal  equation,  the  measure  of  difference 
between  our  own  judgments  and  an  average  standard :  may 
there  not  be  some  corresponding  correction  of  our  personal 
partialities  in  moral  theorizing  ?  If  a  squint,  or  other  ocular 
defect,  disturbs  my  vision,  I  can  get  instructed  in  the  fact,  be 
made  aware  that  my  condition  is  abnormal,  and  either  through 
spectacles  or  diligent  imagination  I  can  learn  the  average  ap¬ 
pearance  of  things :  is  there  no  remedy  or  corrective  for  that 
inward  squint  which  consists  in  a  dissatisfied  egoism,  or  other 
want  of  mental  balance  ?  In  my  conscience  I  saw  that  the 
bias  of  personal  discontent  was  just  as  misleading  and  odious 
as  the  bias  of  self-satisfaction.  WThether  we  look  through  the 
rose-colored  glass  or  the  indigo,  we  are  equally  far  from  the 
hues  which  the  healthy  human  eye  beholds  in  heaven  above 
and  earth  below.  I  began  to  dread  ways  of  consoling  which 
were  really  a  flattering  of  native  illusions,  a  feeding-up  into 
monstrosity  of  an  inward  growth  already  disproportionate ; 
to  get  an  especial  scorn  for  that  scorn  of  mankind  which  is  a 
transmuted  disappointment  of  preposterous  claims ;  to  watch 
with  peculiar  alarm  lest  what  I  called  my  philosophic  estimate 
of  the  human  lot  in  general,  should  be  a  mere  prose  lyric 


26o 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


0 

expressing  my  own  pain  and  consequent  bad  temper.  The 
standing-ground  worth  striving  after  seemed  to  be  some  De¬ 
lectable  Mountain  whence  I  could  see  things  in  proportions 
as  little  as  possible  determined  by  that  self-partiality  which 
certainly  plays  a  necessary  part  in  our  bodily  sustenance;  but 
has  a  starving  effect  on  the  mind. 

Thus  I  finally  gave  up  any  attempt  to  make  out  that  I 
preferred  cutting  a  bad  figure,  and  that  I  liked  to  be  despised, 
because  in  this  way  I  was  getting  more  virtuous  than  my 
successful  rivals ;  and  I  have  long  looked  with  suspicion  on 
all  views  which  are  recommended  as  peculiarly  consolatory 
to  wounded  vanity,  or  other  personal  disappointment.  The 
consolations  of  egoism  are  simply  a  change  of  attitude,  or  a 
resort  to  a  new  kind  of  diet,  which  soothes  and  fattens  it. 
Fed  in  this  way,  it  is  apt  to  become  a  monstrous  spiritual 
pride,  or  a  chuckling  satisfaction  that  the  final  balance  will 
not  be  against  those  who  now  eclipse  us.  Examining  the 
world  in  order  to  find  consolation  is  very  much  like  looking 
carefully  over  the  pages  of  a  great  book  in  order  to  find  our 
own  name,  if  not  in  the  text,  at  least  in  a  laudatory  note ; 
whether  we  find  what  we  want  or  not,  our  preoccupation  has 
hindered  us  from  a  true  knowledge  of  the  contents.  But  an 
attention  fixed  on  the  main  theme,  or  various  matter  of  the 
book,  would  deliver  us  from  that  slavish  subjection  to  our 
own  self-importance.  And  I  had  the  mighty  volume  of  the 
world  before  me.  Nay,  I  had  the  struggling  action  of  a 
myriad  lives  around  me,  each  single  life  as  dear  to  itself 
as  mine  to  me.  Was  there  no  escape  here  from  this  stu¬ 
pidity  of  a  murmuring  self-occupation  ?  Clearly  enough,  if 
anything  hindered  my  thought  from  rising  to  the  force  of 
passionately  interested  contemplation,  or  my  poor  pent-up 
pond  of  sensitiveness  from  widening  into  a  beneficent  river 
of  sympathy,  it  was  my  own  dulness ;  and  though  I  could 
not  make  myself  the  reverse  of  shallow  all  at  once,  I  had  at 
least  learned  where  I  had  better  turn  my  attention. 

Something  came  of  this  alteration  in  my  point  of  view, 
though  I  admit  that  the  result  is  of  no  striking  kind.  Tt  is 


LOOKING  INWARD. 


261 


unnecessary  for  me  to  utter  modest  denials,  since  none  have 
assured  me  that  I  have  a  vast  intellectual  scope,  or  —  what 
is  more  surprising,  considering  I  have  done  so  little  —  that  I 
might,  if  I  chose,  surpass  any  distinguished  man  whom  they 
wish  to  depreciate.  I  have  not  attained  any  lofty  peak  of 
magnanimity,  nor  would  I  trust  beforehand  in  my  capability 
of  meeting  a  severe  demand  for  moral  heroism.  But  that  1 
have  at  least  succeeded  in  establishing  a  habit  of  mind  which 
keeps  watch  against  my  self-partiality,  and  promotes  a  fair 
consideration  of  what  touches  the  feelings  or  the  fortunes  of 
my  neighbors,  seems  to  be  proved  by  the  ready  confidence 
with  which  men  and  women  appeal  to  my  interest  in  their  ex¬ 
perience.  It  is  gratifying  to  one,  who  would  above  all  things 
avoid  the  insanity  of  fancying  himself  a  more  momentous  or 
touching  object  than  ha  really  is,  to  find  that  nobody  expects 
from  him  the  least  sign  of  such  mental  aberration,  and  that 
he  is  evidently  held  capable  of  listening  to  all  kinds  of  per¬ 
sonal  outpouring,  without  the  least  disposition  to  become 
communicative  in  the  same  way.  This  confirmation  of  the 
hope  that  my  bearing  is  not  that  of  the  self-flattering  lunatic 
is  given  me  in  ample  measure.  My  acquaintances  tell  me  un¬ 
reservedly  of  their  triumphs  and  their  piques ;  explain  their 
purposes  at  length,  and  reassure  me  with  cheerfulness  as  to 
their  chances  of  success ;  insist  on  their  theories,  and  accept 
me  as  a  dummy  with  whom  tiiey  rehearse  their  side  of  future 
discussions ;  unwind  their  coiled-up  griefs  in  relation  to  their 
husbands,  or  recite  to  me  examples  of  feminine  incomp/e- 
hensibleness  as  typified  in  their  wives ;  mention  frequently 
the  fair  applause  which  their  merits  have  wrung  from  some 
persons,  and  the  attacks  to  which  certain  oblique  motives 
have  stimulated  others.  At  the  time  when  I  was  less  free 
from  superstition  about  my  own  power  of  charming,  I  occa¬ 
sionally,  in  the  glow  of  sympathy  which  embraced  me  and  my 
confiding  friend  on  the  subject  of  his  satisfaction  or  resent¬ 
ment,  was  urged  to  hint  at  a  corresponding  experience  in  my 
own  case :  but  the  signs  of  a  rapidly  lowering  pulse  and 
spreading  nervous  depression  in  iny  previously  vivacious  in- 


262 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


terlocutor  warned  me  that  I  was  acting  on  that  dangerous 
misreading,  “Do  as  you  are  done  by.”  Recalling  the  true 
version  of  the  Golden  Rule,  I  could  not  wish  that  others  should 
lower  my  spirits  as  I  was  lowering  my  friend’s.  After  several 
times  obtaining  the  same  result  from  a  like  experiment,  in 
which  all  the  circumstances  were  varied  except  my  own  per¬ 
sonality,  I  took  it  as  an  established  inference  that  these  fitful 
signs  of  a  lingering  belief  in  my  own  importance  were  gener¬ 
ally  felt  to  be  abnormal,  and  were  something  short  of  that 
sanity  which  I  aimed  to  secure.  Clearness  on  this  point  is 
not  without  its  gratifications,  as  I  have  said.  While  my  de¬ 
sire  to  explain  myself  in  private  ears  has  been  quelled,  the 
habit  of  getting  interested  in  the  experience  of  others  has 
been  continually  gathering  strength,  and  I  am  really  at  the 
point  of  finding  that  this  world  would  be  worth  living  in 
without  any  lot  of  one’s  own.  Is  it  not  possible  for  me  to 
enjoy  the  scenery  of  the  earth  without  saying  to  myself  I 
have  a  cabbage-garden  in  it  ?  But  this  sounds  like  the  lunacy 
of  fancying  one’s  self  everybody  else,  and  being  unable  to 
play  one’s  own  part  decently,  —  another  form  of  the  disloyal 
attempt  to  be  independent  of  the  common  lot,  and  to  live  with¬ 
out  a  sharing  of  pain. 

Perhaps  I  have  made  self-betrayals  enough  already,  to 
show  that  I  have  not  arrived  at  that  non-liuman  independ¬ 
ence.  My  conversational  reticences  about  myself  turned 
into  garrulousness  on  paper ;  as  the  sea-lion  plunges  and 
swims  the  more  energetically,  because  his  limbs  are  of  a  sort 
to  make  him  shambling  on  land.  The  act  of  writing,  in 
spite  of  past  experience,  brings  with  it  the  vague,  delightful 
illusion  of  an  audience  nearer  to  my  idiom  than  the  Chero- 
kees,  and  more  numerous  than  the  visionary  One  for  whom 
many  authors  have  declared  themselves  willing  to  go  through 
the  pleasing  punishment  of  publication.  My  illusion  is  of  a 
more  liberal  kind,  and  I  imagine  a  far-off,  hazy,  multitu¬ 
dinous  assemblage,  as  in  a  picture  of  Paradise,  making  an 
approving  chorus  to  the  sentences  and  paragraphs  of  which 
I  myself  particularly  enjoy  the  writing.  The  haze  is  a  nee- 


LOOKING  INWARD. 


263 


essary  condition.  If  any  physiognomy  becomes  distinct  in 
the  foreground,  it  is  fatal.  The  countenance  is  sure  to  be 
one  bent  on  discountenancing  my  innocent  intentions :  it  is 
pale-eyed,  incapable  of  being  amused  when  I  am  amused,  ox- 
indignant  at  what  makes  me  indignant ;  it  stares  at  my  pre¬ 
sumption,  pities  my  ignorance,  or  is  manifestly  preparing  to 
expose  the  various  instances  in  which  I  unconsciously  dis¬ 
grace  myself.  I  shudder  at  this  too  corporeal  auditor,  and 
turn  toward  another  point  of  the  compass  where  the  haze  is 
unbroken.  Why  should  I  not  indulge  this  remaining  illusion, 
since  I  do  not  take  my  approving  choral  paradise  as  a  warrant 
for  setting  the  press  to  work  again  and  making  some  thousand 
sheets  of  superior  paper  unsalable  ?  I  leave  my  manuscripts 
to  a  judgment  outside  my  imagination ;  but  I  will  not  ask  to 
’near  it,  or  request  my  friend  to  pronounce  before  I  have  been 
buried  decently,  what  he  really  thinks  of  my  parts,  and  to 
state  candidly  whether  my  papers  would  be  most  usefully 
applied  in  lighting  the  cheerful  domestic  fire.  It  is  too 
probable  that  he  will  be  exasperated  at  the  trouble  I  have 
given  him  of  reading  them ;  but  the  consequent  clearness 
and  vivacity  with  which  he  could  demonstrate  to  me  that 
the  fault  of  my  manuscripts,  as  of  my  one  published  work, 
is  simply  flatness,  and  not  that  surpassing  subtilty  which  is 
the  preferable  ground  of  popular  neglect  —  this  verdict, 
however  instructively  expressed,  is  a  portion  of  earthly  dis¬ 
cipline  of  which  I  will  not  beseech  my  friend  to  be  the  in¬ 
strument.  Other  persons,  I  am  aware,  have  not  the  same 
cowardly  shrinking  from  a  candid  opinion  of  their  perform¬ 
ances,  and  are  even  importunately  eager  for  it ;  but  I  have 
convinced  myself,  in  numerous  cases,  that  such  exposers  of 
their  own  back  to  the  smiter  were  of  too  hopeful  a  disposi¬ 
tion  to  believe  in  the  scourge,  and  really  trusted  in  a  pleas¬ 
ant  anointing,  an  outpouring  of  balm  without  any  previous 
wounds.  I  am  of  a  less  tnisting  disposition,  and  will  only 
ask  my  friend  to  use  his  judgment  in  insuring  me  against 
posthumous  mistake. 

Thus  I  make  myself  a  character  to  write,  and  keep  the 


264 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


pleasing,  inspiring  illusion  of  being  listened  to,  though  1 
may  sometimes  write  about  myself.  What  I  have  already 
said  on  this  too  familiar  theme  has  been  meant  only  as  a 
preface,  to  show  that  in  noting  the  weaknesses  of  my  ac¬ 
quaintances  I  am  conscious  of  my  fellowship  with  them. 
That  a  gratified  sense  of  superiority  is  at  the  root  of  bar¬ 
barous  laughter  may  be  at  least  half  the  truth.  But  there 
is  a  loving  laughter  in  which  the  only  recognized  supe¬ 
riority  is  that  of  the  ideal  self,  the  God  within,  holding  the 
mirror  and  the  scourge  for  our  own  pettiness  as  well  as  our 
neighbors'. 


LOOKING  BACKWARD. 


MOST  of  us,  who  have  had  decent  parents,  would  shrink 
from  wishing  that  our  father  and  mother  had  been  some¬ 
body  else  whom  we  never  knew;  yet  it  is  held  no  impiety  — 
rather,  a  graceful  mark  of  instruction  —  for  a  man  to  wail 
that  he  was  not  the  son  of  another  age  and  another  nation, 
of  which  also  he  knows  nothing  except  through  the  easy 
process  of  an  imperfect  imagination  and  a  flattering  fancy. 

But  the  period  thus  looked  back  on  with  a  purely  admiring 
regret,  as  perfect  enough  to  suit  a  superior  mind,  is  always 
a  long  way  off;  the  desirable  contemporaries  are  hardly 
nearer  than  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  most  likely  they  are  the  fel¬ 
low-citizens  of  Pericles,  or,  best  of  all,  of  the  iEolic  lyrists, 
whose  sparse  remains  suggest  a  comfortable  contrast  with 
our  redundance.  No  impassioned  personage  wishes  he  had 
been  born  in  the  age  of  Pitt,  that  his  ardent  youth  might 
have  eaten  the  dearest  bread,  dressed  itself  with  the  longest 
coat-tails  and  shortest  waist,  or  heard  the  loudest  grumbling 
at  the  heaviest  war-taxes ;  and  it  would  be  really  something 
original  in  polished  verse  if  one  of  our  young  writers  de¬ 
clared  he  would  gladly  be  turned  eighty-five,  that  he  might 
have  known  the  joy  and  pride  of  being  an  Englishman  when 
there  were  fewer  reforms  and  plenty  of  highwaymen,  fewer 
discoveries  and  more  faces  pitted  with  the  small-pox,  when 
laws  were  made  to  keep  up  the  price  of  corn,  and  the  trouble¬ 
some  Irish  were  more  miserable.  Three-quarters  of  a  cen¬ 
tury  ago  is  not  a  distance  that  lends  much  enchantment  to 
the  view.  We  are  familiar  with  the  average  men  of  that 
period,  and  are  still  consciously  encumbered  with  its  bad 


266 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


contrivances  and  mistaken  acts.  The  lords  and  gentlemen 
painted  by  young  Lawrence  talked  and  wrote  their  nonsense 
in  a  tongue  we  thoroughly  understand  ;  hence  their  times 
are  not  much  flattered,  not  much  glorified,  by  the  yearnings 
of  that  modern  sect  of  Flagellants  who  make  a  ritual  of 
lashing  —  not  themselves,  but  all  their  neighbors.  To  me, 
however,  that  parental  time,  the  time  of  my  father’s  youth, 
never  seemed  prosaic,  for  it  came  to  my  imagination  first 
through  his  memories,  which  made  a  wondrous  perspective 
to  my  little  daily  world  of  discovery.  And,  for  my  part,  I 
can  call  no  age  absolutely  unpoetic :  how  should  it  be  so, 
since  there  are  always  children  to  whom  the  acorns  and  the 
swallow’s  eggs  are  a  wonder,  —  always  these  human  passions 
and  fatalities,  through  which  Garrick  as  Hamlet  in  bob-wig 
and  knee-breeches  moved  his  audience,  more  than  some  have 
since  done  in  velvet  tunic  and  plume  ?  But  every  age  since 
the  golden  may  be  made  more  or  less  prosaic  by  minds  that 
attend  only  to  its  vulgar  and  sordid  elements,  of  which  there 
was  always  an  abundance,  even  in  Greece  and  Italy,  the 
favorite  realms  of  the  retrospective  optimists.  To  be  quite 
fair  toward  the  ages,  a  little  ugliness  as  well  as  beauty  must 
be  allowed  to  each  of  them,  a  little  implicit  poetry  even  to 
those  which  echoed  loudest  with  servile,  pompous,  and  trivial 
prose. 

Such  impartiality  is  not  in  vogue  at  present.  If  we  ac¬ 
knowledge  our  obligation  to  the  ancients,  it  is  hardly  to  be 
done  without  some  flouting  of  our  contemporaries,  who,  with 
all  their  faults,  must  be  allowed  the  merit  of  keeping  the 
world  habitable  for  the  refined  eulogists  of  the  blameless 
past.  One  wonders  whether  the  remarkable  originators  who 
first  had  the  notion  of  digging  wells,  or  of  churning  for  but¬ 
ter,  and  who  were  certainly  very  useful  to  their  own  time  as 
well  as  ours,  were  left  quite  free  from  invidious  comparison 
with  predecessors  who  let  the  water  and  the  milk  alone ;  or 
whether  some  rhetorical  nomad,  as  he  stretched  himself  on 
the  grass  with  a  good  appetite  for  contemporary  butter,  be¬ 
came  loud  on  the  virtue  of  ancestors  who  were  uncorrupted 


LOOKING  BACKWARD. 


267 


by  tlie  produce  of  the  cow ;  nay,  whether,  in  a  high  flight  of 
imaginative  self-sacrifice  (after  swallowing  the  butter),  he 
even  wished  himself  earlier  born  and  already  eaten  for  the 
sustenance  of  a  generation  more  naive  than  his  own. 

I  have  often  had  the  fool’s  hectic  of  wishing  about  the  un¬ 
alterable  ;  but  with  me  that  useless  exercise  has  turned  chiefly 
on  the  conception  of  a  different  self,  and  not,  as  it  usually 
does  in  literature,  on  the  advantage  of  having  been  born  in  a 
different  age,  and  more  especially  in  one  where  life  is  im¬ 
agined  to  have  been  altogether  majestic  and  graceful.  With 
my  present  abilities,  external  proportions,  and  generally 
small  provision  for  ecstatic  enjoyment,  where  is  the  ground 
for  confidence  that  I  should  have  had  a  preferable  career  in 
such  an  epoch  of  society  ?  An  age  in  which  every  depart¬ 
ment  has  its  awkward-squad  seems  in  my  mind’s  eye  to  suit 
me  better.  I  might  have  wandered  by  the  Strymon  under 
Philip  and  Alexander  without  throwing  any  new  light  on 
method  or  organizing  the  sum  of  human  knowledge  ;  on  the 
other  hand,  I  might  have  objected  to  Aristotle  as  too  much  of 
a  systematizer,  and  have  preferred  the  freedom  of  a  little  self- 
contradiction  as  offering  more  chances  of  truth.  I  gather, 
too,  from  the  undeniable  testimony  of  his  disciple  Theo¬ 
phrastus,  that  there  were  boors,  ill-bred  persons,  and  detrac¬ 
tors,  even  in  Athens,  of  species  remarkably  corresponding  to 
the  English,  and  not  yet  made  endurable  by  being  classic ; 
and  altogether,  with  my  present  fastidious  nostril,  I  feel 
that  I  am  the  better  off  for  possessing  Athenian  life  solely 
as  an  inodorous  fragment  of  antiquity.  As  to  Sappho’s 
Mitylene,  while  I  am  convinced  that  the  Lesbian  capital 
held  some  plain  men  of  middle  stature  and  slow  conversa¬ 
tional  powers,  the  addition  of  myself  to  their  number,  though 
clad  in  the  majestic  folds  of  the  himation  and  without  cravat, 
would  hardly  have  made  a  sensation  among  the  accomplished 
fair  ones  who  were  so  precise  in  adjusting  their  own  drapery 
about  their  delicate  ankles.  Whereas,  by  being  another  sort 
of  person  in  the  present  age,  I  might  have  given  it  some 
needful  theoretic  clewj  or  1  might  have  poured  forth  poetic 


268 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


strains  which  would  have  anticipated  theory,  and  seemed  a 
voice  from  “  the  prophetic  soul  of  the  wide  world  dreaming 
of  things  to  come or  I  might  have  been  one  of  those  be¬ 
nignant  lovely  souls  who,  without  astonishing  the  public  and 
posterity,  make  a  happy  difference  in  the  lives  close  around 
them,  and  in  this  way  lift  the  average  of  earthly  joy :  in 
some  form  or  other  I  might  have  been  so  filled  from  the 
store  of  universal  existence,  that  I  should  have  been  freed 
from  that  empty  wishing  which  is  like  a  child’s  cry  to  be  in¬ 
side  a  golden  cloud,  its  imagination  being  too  ignorant  to 
figure  the  lining  of  dimness  and  damp. 

On  the  whole,  though  there  is  some  rash  boasting  about 
enlightenment,  and  an  occasional  insistence  on  an  originality 
which  is  that  of  the  present  year’s  corn-crop,  we  seem  too 
much  disposed  to  indulge,  and  to  call  by  complimentary 
names,  a  greater  charity  for  other  portions  of  the  human 
race  than  for  our  contemporaries.  All  reverence  and  grati¬ 
tude  for  the  worthy  dead  on  whose  labors  we  have  entered, 
all  care  for  the  future  generations  whose  lot  we  are  prepar¬ 
ing  ;  but  some  affection  and  fairness  for  those  who  are  doing 
the  actual  work  of  the  world,  some  attempt  to  regard  them 
with  the  same  freedom  from  ill-temper,  whether  on  private 
or  public  grounds,  as  we  may  hope  will  be  felt  by  those  who 
will  call  us  ancient !  Otherwise,  the  looking  before  and 
after,  which  is  our  grand  human  privilege,  is  in  danger  of 
turning  to  a  sort  of  other-worldliness,  breeding  a  more  illogi¬ 
cal  indifference  or  bitterness  than  was  ever  bred  by  the  as¬ 
cetic’s  contemplation  of  heaven.  Except  on  the  ground  of 
a  primitive  golden  age  and  continuous  degeneracy,  I  see  no 
rational  footing  for  scorning  the  whole  present  population 
of  the  globe  ;  unless  I  scorn  every  previous  generation  from 
whom  they  have  inherited  their  diseases  of  mind  and  body, 
and  by  consequence  scorn  my  own  scorn,  which  is  equally 
an  inheritance  of  mixed  ideas  and  feelings,  concocted  for 
me  in  the  boiling  caldron  of  this  universally  contemptible 
life  —  and  so  on,  scorning  to  infinity.  This  may  represent 
some  actual  states  of  mind,  for  it  is  a  narrow  prejudice  of 


LOOKING  BACKWARD. 


2G9 


mathematicians  to  suppose  that  ways  of  thinking  are  to  be 
driven  out  of  the  field  by  being  reduced  to  an  absurdity. 
The  Absurd  is  taken  as  an  excellent  juicy  thistle  by  many 
constitutions. 

Reflections  of  this  sort  have  gradually  determined  me  not 
to  grumble  at  the  age  in  which  I  happen  to  have  been  born  — 
a  natural  tendency  certainly  older  than  Hesiod.  Many  an¬ 
cient  beautiful  things  are  lost,  many  ugly  modern  things  have 
arisen  ;  but  invert  the  proposition,  and  it  is  equally  true.  I 
at  least  am  a  modern,  with  some  interest  in  advocating  toler¬ 
ance  ;  and  notwithstanding  an  inborn  beguilement  which  car¬ 
ries  my  affection  and  regret  continually  into  an  imagined 
past,  I  am  aware  that  I  must  lose  all  sense  of  moral  propor¬ 
tion  unless  I  keep  alive  a  stronger  attachment  to  what  is 
near,  and  a  power  of  admiring  what  I  best  know  and  under¬ 
stand.  Hence  this  question  of  wishing  to  be  rid  of  one’s 
contemporaries  associates  itself  with  my  filial  feeling,  and 
calls  up  the  thought  that  I  might  as  justifiably  wish  that  I 
had  had  other  parents  than  those  whose  loving  tones  are  my 
earliest  memory,  and  whose  last  parting  first  taught  me  the 
meaning  of  death.  I  feel  bound  to  quell  such  a  wish,  as 
blasphemy. 

Besides,  there  are  other  reasons  why  I  am  contented  that 
my  father  was  a  country  parson,  born  much  about  the  same 
time  as  Scott  and  Wordsworth ;  notwithstanding  certain 
qualms  I  have  felt  at  the  fact  that  the  property  on  which  I 
am  living  was  saved  out  of  tithe  before  the  period  of  com- 
mutation,  and  without  the  provisional  transfiguration  into  a 
modus.  It  has  sometimes  occurred  to  me,  when  I  have  been 
taking  a  slice  of  excellent  ham,  that,  from  a  too  tenable  point 
of  view,  I  was  breakfasting  on  a  small,  squealing,  black  pig 
which,  more  than  half  a  century  ago,  was  the  unwilling  rep¬ 
resentative  of  spiritual  advantages,  not  otherwise  acknowl¬ 
edged  by  the  grudging  farmer  or  dairyman  who  parted  with 
him.  One  enters  on  a  fearful  labyrinth  in  tracing  compound 
interest  backward,  and  such  complications  of  thought  have 
reduced  the  flavor  of  the  ham  j  but  since  I  have  nevertheless 


270 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


eaten  it,  the  chief  effect  has  been  to  moderate  the  severity  of 
my  radicalism  (which  was  not  part  of  my  paternal  inheritance) 
and  to  raise  the  assuaging  reflection,  that  if  the  pig  and  the 
parishioner  had  been  intelligent  enough  to  anticipate  my  his¬ 
torical  point  of  view,  they  would  have  seen  themselves  and 
the  rector  in  a  light  that  would  have  made  tithe  voluntary. 
.Notwithstanding  such  drawbacks,  I  am  rather  fond  of  the 
mental  furniture  I  got  by  having  a  father  who  was  well  ac¬ 
quainted  with  all  ranks  of  his  neighbors,  and  am  thankful  that 
he  was  not  one  of  those  aristocratic  clergymen  who  could  not 
have  sat  down  to  a  meal  with  any  family  in  the  parish  except 
toy  lord’s,  —  still  more,  that  he  was  not  an  earl  or  a  marquis. 
A  chief  misfortune  of  high  birth  is  that  it  usually  shuts  a 
man  out  from  the  large  sympathetic  knowledge  of  human  ex¬ 
perience  which  comes  from  contact  with  various  classes  on 
their  own  level,  and  in  my  father’s  time  that  entail  of  social 
ignorance  had  not  been  disturbed  as  we  see  it  now.  To  look 
always  from  overhead  at  the  crowd  of  one’s  fellow-men  must 
be  in  many  ways  incapacitating,  even  with  the  best  will  and 
intelligence.  The  serious  blunders  it  must  lead  to  in  the 
effort  to  manage  them  for  their  good,  one  may  see  clearly  by 
fhe  mistaken  ways  people  take  of  flattering  and  enticing  those 
whose  associations  are  alike  their  own.  Hence  I  have  always 
thought  that  the  most  fortunate  Britons  are  those  whose  ex¬ 
perience  has  given  them  a  practical  share  in  many  aspects  of 
the  national  lot,  who  have  lived  long  among  the  mixed  com¬ 
monalty,  roughing  it  with  them  under  difficulties,  knowing 
how  their  food  tastes  to  them,  and  getting  acquainted  with 
their  notions  and  motives,  not  by  inference  from  traditional 
types  in  literature  or  from  philosophical  theories,  but  from 
daily  fellowship  and  observation.  Of  course  such  experience 
is  apt  to  get  antiquated,  and  my  father  might  And  himself  much 
at  a  loss  among  a  mixed  rural  population  of  the  present  day ; 
but  he  knew  very  well  what  could  be  wisely  expected  from  the 
miners,  the  weavers,  the  field-laborers,  and  farmers  of  his  own 
time,  —  yes,  and  from  the  aristocracy,  for  he  had  been  brought 
up  in  close  contact  with  them,  and  had  been  companion  to  a 


LOOKING  BACKWARD. 


271 


young  nobleman  who  was  deaf  and  dumb.  “  A  clergyman, 
lad,”  he  used  to  say  to  me,  “  should  feel  in  himself  a  bit  of 
every  class  ;  ”  and  this  theory  had  a  felicitous  agreement  with 
his  inclination  and  practice,  which  certainly  answered  in 
making  him  beloved  by  his  parishioners.  They  grumbled  at 
their  obligation  towards  him ;  but  what  then  ?  It  was  natu¬ 
ral  to  grumble  at  any  demand  for  payment,  tithe  included,  but 
also  natural  for  a  rector  to  desire  his  tithe  and  look  well 
after  the  levying.  A  Christian  pastor  who  did  not  mind  about 
his  money  was  not  an  ideal  prevalent  among  the  rural  minds 
of  fat  central  England,  and  might  have  seemed  to  introduce  a 
dangerous  laxity  of  supposition  about  Christian  laymen  who 
happened  to  be  creditors.  My  father  was  none  the  less  be 
loved  because  he  was  understood  to  be  of  a  saving  disposi 
tion ;  and  how  could  he  save  without  getting  his  tithe  ?  The 
sight  of  him  was  not  unwelcome  at  any  door,  and  he  was 
remarkable  among  the  clergy  of  his  district  for  having  no 
lasting  feud  with  rich  or  poor  in  his  parish.  I  profited  by  his 
popularity ;  and  for  months  after  my  mother’s  death,  when  1 
was  a  little  fellow  of  nine,  I  was  taken  care  of  first  at  one 
homestead,  and  then  at  another,  —  a  variety  which  I  enjoyed 
much  more  than  my  stay  at  the  Hall,  where  there  was  a  tutor. 
Afterward,  for  several  years,  I  was  my  father’s  constant  com¬ 
panion  in  his  out-door  business,  riding  by  his  side  on  my 
little  pony,  and  listening  to  the  lengthy  dialogues  he  held  with 
Darby  or  Joan,  the  one  on  the  road  or  in  the  field,  the  other 
outside  or  inside  her  door.  In  my  earliest  remembrance  of 
him  his  hair  was  already  gray,  for  I  was  his  youngest  as  well 
as  his  only  surviving  child;  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  ad¬ 
vanced  age  was  appropriate  to  a  father,  as  indeed  in  all  re¬ 
spects  I  considered  him  a  parent  so  much  to  my  honor,  that 
the  mention  of  my  relationship  to  him  was  likely  to  secure 
me  regard  among  those  to  whom  I  was  otherwise  a  stranger, 
—  my  father’s  stories  from  his  life  including  so  many  names 
of  distant  persons,  that  my  imagination  placed  no  limit  to  his 
acquaintanceship.  He  was  a  pithy  talker,  and  his  sermons 
bore  marks  of  his  own  composition.  It  is  true,  they  must 


272  ESSAYS  OE  GEORGE  ELIOT. 

hare  been  already  old  when  I  began  to  listen  to  them,  and 
they  were  no  more  than  a  year’s  supply,  so  that  they  recurred 
as  regularly  as  the  Collects.  But  though  this  system  has 
been  much  ridiculed,  I  am  prepared  to  defend  it  as  equally 
sound  with  that  of  a  liturgy ;  and  even  if  my  researches  had 
shown  me  that  some  of  my  father’s  early  sermons  had  been 
copied  out  from  the  works  of  elder  divines,  this  would  only 
have  been  another  proof  of  his  good  judgment.  .  One  may 
prefer  fresh  eggs,  though  laid  by  a  fowl  of  the  meanest 
understanding ;  but  why  fresh  sermons  ? 

Nor  can  I  be  sorry,  though  myself  given  to  meditative  if 
not  active  innovation,  that  my  father  was  a  Tory  who  had 
not  exactly  a  dislike  to  innovators  and  dissenters,  but  a  slight 
opinion  of  them  as  persons  of  ill-founded  self-confidence ; 
whence  my  young  ears  gathered  many  details  concerning 
those  who  might  perhaps  have  called  themselves  the  more 
advanced  thinkers  in  our  nearest  market-town,  tending  to 
convince  me  that  their  characters  were  quite  as  mixed  as 
those  of  the  thinkers  behind  them.  This  circumstance  of 
my  rearing  has  at  least  delivered  me  from  certain  mistakes 
of  classification  which  I  observe  in  many  of  my  superiors, 
who  have  apparently  no  affectionate  memories  of  a >  goodness 
mingled  with  what  they  now  regard  as  outworn  prejudices. 
Indeed  my  philosophical  notions,  such  as  they  are,  continu¬ 
ally  carry  me  back  to  the  time  when  the  fitful  gleams  of 
a  spring  day  used  to  show  me  my  own  shadow  as  that  of  a 
small  boy  on  a  small  pony,  riding  by  the  side  of  a  larger  cob- 
mounted  shadow  over  the  breezy  uplands  which  we  used  to 
dignify  with  the  name  of  hills,  or  along  by-roads,  with  broad 
grassy  borders  and  hedgerows  reckless  of  utility,  on  our  way 
to  outlying  hamlets,  whose  groups  of  inhabitants  were  as  dis¬ 
tinctive  to  my  imagination  as  if  they  had  belonged  to  different 
regions  of  the  globe.  From  these  we  sometimes  rode  onward 
to  the  adjoining  parish,  where  also  my  father  officiated,  for 
he  was  a  pluralist,  but  —  I  hasten  to  add  —  on  the  smallest 
scale ;  for  his  own  extra  living  was  a  poor  vicarage,  with 
hardly  fifty  parishioners,  and  its  church  would  have -made  a 


LOOKING  BACKWARD. 


273 


very  shabby  bam,  —  the  gray,  worm-eaten  wood  of  its  pews 
and  pulpit,  with  their  doors  only  half-hanging  on  the  hinges, 
being  exactly  the  color  of  a  lean  mouse  which  I  once  observed 
as  an  interesting  member  of  the  scant  congregation,  and  con¬ 
jectured  to  be  the  identical  Church-mouse  I  had  heard  re¬ 
ferred  to  as  an  example  of  extreme  poverty ;  for  I  was  a 
precocious  boy,  and  often  reasoned  after  the  fashion  of  my 
elders,  arguing  that  Jack  and  Jill  were  real  personages  in 
our  parish,  and  that  if  I  could  identify  Jack  I  should  find 
on  him  the  mark  of  a  broken  crown. 

Sometimes  when  I  am  in  a  crowded  London  drawing-room 
(for  I  am  a  town-bird  now,  acquainted  with  smoky  eaves,  am' 
tasting  Nature  in  the  parks),  quick  flights  of  memory  take 
me  back  among  my  father’s  parishioners,  while  I  am  still 
conscious  of  elbowing  men  who  wear  the  same  evening  uni¬ 
form  as  myself ;  and  I  presently  begin  to  wonder  what  va¬ 
rieties  of  history  lie  hidden  under  this  monotony  of  asjDect. 
Some  of  them,  perhaps,  belong  to  families  with  many  quar- 
terings  ;  but  how  many  “  quarterings  ”  of  diverse  contact 
with  their  fellow-countrymen  enter  into  their  qualifications 
to  be  parliamentary  leaders,  professors  of  social  science,  or 
journalistic  guides  of  the  popular  mind  ?  Not  that  I  feel 
myself  a  person  made  competent  by  experience ;  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  I  argue  that  since  an  observation  of  different  ranks 
has  still  left  me  practically  a  poor  creature,  what  must  be 
the  condition  of  those  who  object  even  to  read  about  the  life 
of  other  British  classes  than  their  own  ?  But  of  my  elbow¬ 
ing  neighbors  with  their  crush-hats  I  usually  imagine  that 
the  most  distinguished  among  them  have  probably  had  a  far 
more  instructive  journey  into  manhood  than  mine.  Here, 
perhaps,  is  a  thought-worn  physiognomy,  seeming  at  the 
present  moment  to  bo  classed  as  a  mere  species  of  white 
cravat  and  swallow-tail,  which  may  cnce,  like  Faraday’s,  have 
shown  itself  in  curiously  dubious  embryonic  form  leaning 
against  a  cottage-lintel,  in  small  corduroys,  and  hungrily  eat¬ 
ing  a  bit  of  brown  bread  and  bacon ;  there  is  a  pair  of  eyes, 
now  too  much  wearied  by  the  gas-light  of  public  assemblies, 

id 


VOL.  IX. 


274 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


that  once  perhaps  learned  to  read  their  native  England 
through  the  same  alphabet  as  mine  —  not  within  the  boun¬ 
daries  of  an  ancestral  park,  never  even  being  driven  through 
the  country  town  five  miles  off,  but  —  among  the  midland 
villages  and  markets,  along  by  the  tree-studded  hedgerows, 
and  where  the  heavy  barges  seem  in  the  distance  to  float 
mysteriously  among  the  rushes  and  the  feathered  grass. 
Our  vision,  both  real  and  ideal,  has  since  then  been  filled 
with  far  other  scenes,  —  among  eternal  snows  and  stupendous 
sun-scorched  monuments  of  departed  empires,  within  the 
scent  of  the  long  orange-groves,  and  where  the  temple  of 
Neptune  looks  out  over  the  siren-haunted  sea.  But  my  eyes 
at  least  have  kept  their  early  affectionate  joy  in  our  native 
landscape,  which  is  one  deep  root  of  our  national  life  and 
language. 

And  I  often  smile  at  my  consciousness  that  certain  con¬ 
servative  prepossessions  have  mingled  themselves  for  me 
with  the  influences  of  our  midland  scenery,  from  the  tops  of 
the  elms  down  to  the  buttercups  and  the  little  wayside 
vetches.  Naturally  enough  !  That  part  of  my  father’s  prime 
to  which  he  oftenest  referred  had  fallen  on  the  days  when 
the  great  wave  of  political  enthusiasm  and  belief  in  a  speedy 
regeneration  of  all  things  had  ebbed,  and  the  supposed  mil¬ 
lennial  initiative  of  France  was  turning  into  a  Napoleonic  em¬ 
pire  —  the  sway  of  an  Attila,  with  a  mouth  speaking  _.roud 
things,  in  a  jargon  half-re  volutionary,  half-Roman.  Men 
were  beginning  to  shrink  timidly  from  the  memory  of  their 
own  words,  and  from  the  recognition  of  the  fellowships  they 
had  formed  ten  years  before  ;  and  even  reforming  English¬ 
men,  for  the  most  part,  were  willing  to  wait  for  the  perfec¬ 
tion  of  society,  if  only  they  could  keep  their  throats  perfect, 
and  help  to  drive  away  the  chief  enemy  of  mankind  from 
our  coasts.  To  my  father’s  mind  the  noisy  teachers  of  rev¬ 
olutionary  doctrine  were,  to  speak  mildly,  a  variable  mixture 
of  the  fool  and  the  scoundrel ;  the  welfare  of  the  nation  lay 
in  a  strong  government  which  cuuld  maintain  order ;  and  I 
was  accustomed  to  hear  him  utter  the  word  “  government  ’’ 


LOOKING  BACKWARD. 


275 


in  a  tone  that  charged  it  with  awe,  and  made  it  part  of  my 
effective  religion,  —  in  contrast  with  the  word  “  rebel/’  which 
seemed  to  carry  the  stamp  of  evil  in  its  syllables,  and,  lit  by 
the  fact  that  Satan  was  the  first  rebel,  made  an  argument 
dispensing  with  more  detailed  inquiry.  I  gathered  that  our 
national  troubles  in  the  first  two  decades  of  this  century 
were  not  at  all  due  to  the  mistakes  of  our  administrators,  and 
that  England,  with  its  fine  Church  and  Constitution,  would 
have  been  exceedingly  well  off  if  every  British  subject  had 
been  thankful  for  what  was  provided,  and  had  minded  his 
own  business  —  if,  for  example,  numerous  Catholics  of  that 
period  had  been  aware  how  very  modest  they  ought  to  be, 
considering  they  were  Irish.  The  times,  I  heard,  had  often 
been  bad ;  but  I  was  constantly  hearing  of  “  bad  times  ”  as  a 
name  for  actual  evenings  and  mornings,  when  the  godfathers 
who  gave  them  that  name  appeared  to  me  remarkably  com¬ 
fortable.  Altogether,  my  father’s  England  seemed  to  me 
lovable,  laudable,  full  of  good  men,  and  having  good  rulers, 
from  Mr.  Pitt  on  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  until  he  was 
for  emancipating  the  Catholics ;  and  it  was  so  far  from  pro¬ 
saic  to  me,  that  I  looked  into  it  for  a  more  exciting  romance 
than  such  as  I  could  find  in  my  own  adventures,  which  con¬ 
sisted  mainly  in  fancied  crises  calling  for  the  resolute  wield¬ 
ing  of  domestic  swords  and  fire-arms  against  unapparent 
robbers,  rioters,  and  invaders,  who,  it  seemed,  in  my  father’s 
prime,  had  more  chance  of  being  real.  The  morris-dancers 
had  not  then  dwindled  to  a  ragged  and  almost  vanished  rout 
(owing  the  traditional  name  probably  to  the  historic  fancy 
of  our  superannuated  groom)  ;  also  the  good  old  king  was 
alive  and  well,  which  made  all  the  more  difference,  because 
I  had  no  notion  what  he  was  and  did  —  only  understand¬ 
ing  in  general  that,  if  he  had  been  still  on  the  throne,  he 
would  have  hindered  everything  that  wise  persons  thought 
undesirable. 

Certainly  that  elder  England  —  with  its  frankly  salable 
boroughs,  so  cheap  compared  with  the  seats  obtained  under 
the  reformed  method,  and  its  boroughs  kindly  presented  by 


276 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


noblemen  desirous  to  encourage  gratitude  ;  its  prisons,  with  a 
miscellaneous  company  of  felons  and  maniacs,  and  without 
any  supply  of  water ;  its  bloated,  idle  charities ;  its  non-resi¬ 
dent,  jovial  clergy ;  its  militia-balloting ;  and,  above  all,  its 
blank  ignorance  of  what  we,  its  posterity,  should  be  thinking 
of  it  —  has  great  differences  from  the  England  of  to-day.  Yet 
we  discern  a  strong  family  likeness.  Is  there  any  country 
which  shows  at  once  as  much  stability  and  as  much  suscep¬ 
tibility  to  change  as  ours  ?  Our  national .  life  is  like  that 
scenery  which  I  early  learned  to  love,  not  subject  to  great 
convulsions,  but  easily  showing  more  or  less  delicate  (some¬ 
times  melancholy)  effects  from  minor  changes.  Hence  our 
midland  plains  have  never  lost  their  familiar  expression  and 
conservative  spirit  for  me ;  yet  at  every  other  mile,  since  I 
first  looked  on  them,  some  sign  of  world-wide  change,  some 
new  direction  of  human  labor,  has  wrought  itself  into  what 
one  may  call  the  speech  of  the  landscape  —  in  contrast  with 
those  grander  and  vaster  regions  of  the  earth  which  keep  an 
indifferent  aspect  in  the  presence  of  men’s  toil  and  devices. 
What  does  it  signify  that  a  liliputian  train  passes  over  a 
viaduct  amidst  the  abysses  of  the  Apennines,  or  that  a  cara¬ 
van,  laden  with  a  nation’s  offerings,  creeps  across  the  un¬ 
resting  sameness  of  the  desert,  or  that  a  petty  cloud  of  steam 
sweeps  for  an  instant  over  the  face  of  an  Egyptian  colossus, 
immovably  submitting  to  its  slow  burial  beneath  the  sand  ? 
But  our  woodlands  and  pastures,  our  hedge-parted  cornfields 
and  meadows,  our  bits  of  high  common  where  we  used  to 
plant  the  windmills,  our  quiet  little  rivers  here  and  there  fit 
to  turn  a  mill-wheel,  our  villages  along  the  old  coach-roads, 
are  all  easily  alterable  lineaments  that  seem  to  make  the 
face  of  our  mother-land  cympathetic  with  the  laborious  lives 
of  her  children.  She  does  not  take  their  ploughs  ana  wagons 
contemptuously,  but  rather  makes  every  hovel  and  every 
sheepfold,  every  railed  bridge  or  fallen  tree-trunk,  an  agree¬ 
ably  noticeable  incident ;  not  a  mere  speck  in  the  midst  of 
unmeasured  vastness,  but  a  piece  of  our  social  history  ir 
pictorial  writing. 


LOOKING  BACKWARD. 


277 


Our  rural  tracts,  where  no  Babel-chimney  scales  the  heav¬ 
ens,  are  without  mighty  objects  to  fill  the  soul  with  the 
sense  of  an  outer  world  unconquerably  aloof  from  our  ef¬ 
forts.  The  wastes  are  playgrounds  (and  let  us  try  to  keep 
them  such  for  the  children’s  children,  who  will  inherit  no 
other  sort  of  demesne) ;  the  grasses  and  reeds  nod  to  each 
other  over  the  river,  but  we  have  cut  a  canal  close  by ;  the 
very  neiglits  laugh  with  corn  in  August,  or  lift  the  plough- 
team  against  the  sky  in  September.  Then  comes  a  crowd  of 
burly  navvies  with  pickaxes  and  barrows ;  and  while  hardly 
a  wrinkle  is  made  in  the  fading  mother's  face,  or  a  new  curve 
of  health  in  the  blooming  girl’s,  the  hills  are  cut  through  or 
the  breaches  between  them  spanned,  we  choose  our  level,  and 
the  white  steam-pennon  flies  along  it. 

But  because  our  land  shows  this  readiness  to  be  changed, 
all  signs  of  permanence  upon  it  raise  a  tender  attachment 
instead  of  awe  :  some  of  us,  at  least,  love  the  scanty  relics  of 
our  forests,  and  are  thankful  if  a  bush  is  left  of  the  old 
hedgerow.  A  crumbling  bit  of  wall  where  the  delicate  ivy¬ 
leaved  toad-flax  hangs  its  light  branches,  or  a  bit  of  gray 
thatch  with  patches  of  dark  moss  on  its  shoulder  and  a  troop 
of  grass-stems  on  its  ridge,  is  a  thing  to  visit.  And  then 
the  tiled  roof  of  cottage  and  homestead ;  of  the  long  cow-slied 
where  generations  of  the  milky  mothers  have  stood  patiently  ; 
of  the  broad-shouldered  barns,  where  the  old-fashioned  flail 
once  made  resonant  music,  while  the  watch-dog  barked  at  the 
timidly  venturesome  fowls,  making  pecking  raids  on  the  out- 
flying  grain, — the  roofs  that  have  looked  out  from  among 
the  elms  and  walnut-trees,  or  beside  the  yearly  group  of  hay 
and  corn  stacks,  or  below  the  square  stone  steeple,  gathering 
their  gray  or  ochre-tinted  lichens  and  their  olive-green 
mosses  under  all  ministries  —  let  us  praise  the  sober  har¬ 
monies  they  give  to  our  landscape,  helping  to  unite  us  pleas¬ 
antly  with  the  elder  generations,  who  tilled  the  soil  for  us  be¬ 
fore  we  were  born,  and  paid  heavier  and  heavier  taxes,  with 
much  grumbling,  but  without  that  deepest  root  of  corruption 
—  the  self-indulgent  despair  which  cuts  down  and  consumes, 
and  never  plants. 


278  ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 

But  I  check  myself.  Perhaps  this  England  of  my  affec¬ 
tions  is  half- visionary  —  a  dream  in  which  things  are  con¬ 
nected  according  to  my  well-fed,  lazy  mood,  and  not  at  all 
by  the  multitudinous  links  of  graver,  sadder  fact,  such  as 
belong  everywhere  to  the  story  of  human  labor.  Well,  well, 
the  illusions  that  began  for  us  when  we  were  less  acquainted 
with  evil  have  not  lost  their  value  when  we  discern  them  to 
be  illusions.  They  feed  the  ideal  Better ;  and  in  loving  them 
still,  we  strengthen  the  precious  habit  of  loving  something 
not  visibly,  tangibly  existent,  but  a  spiritual  product  of  our 
visible,  tangible  selves. 

I  cherish  my  childish  loves,  the  memory  of  that  warm 
little  nest  where  my  affections  were  fledged.  Since  then  I 
have  learned  to  care  for  foreign  countries,  for  literatures 
foreign  and  ancient,  for  the  life  of  Continental  towns  dozing 
round  old  cathedrals,  for  the  life  of  London,  half-sleepless 
with  eager  thought  and  strife,  with  indigestion,  or  with  hun¬ 
ger  ;  and  now  my  consciousness  is  chiefly  of  the  busy,  anx¬ 
ious,  metropolitan  sort.  My  system  responds  sensitively  to 
the  London  weather-signs,  political,  social,  literary ;  and  my 
bachelor’s  hearth  is  imbedded  where,  by  much  craning  of 
head  and  neck,  I  can  catch  sight  of  a  sycamore  in  the  Square 
garden.  I  belong  to  the  “  Nation  of  London.”  Why  ?  There 
have  been  many  voluntary  exiles  in  the  world ;  and  probably 
in  the  very  first  exodus  of  the  patriarchal  Aryans —  for  I  am 
determined  not  to  fetch  my  examples  from  races  whose  talk 
is  of  uncles  and  no  fathers  — some  of  those  who  sallied  forth 
went  for  the  sake  of  a  loved  companionship,  when  they 
would  willingly  have  kept  sight  of  the  familiar  plains,  and 
of  the  hills  to  which  they  had  first  lifted  up  their  eyes. 


HOW  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH. 


THE  serene  and  beneficent  goddess  Truth,  like  other 
deities  whose  disposition  has  been  too  hastily  inferred 
from  that  of  the  men  who  have  invoked  them,  can  hardly  be 
well  pleased  with  much  of  the  worship  paid  to  her  even  in 
this  milder  age,  when  the  stake  and  the  rack  have  ceased  to 
form  part  of  her  ritual.  Some  cruelties  still  pass  for  service 
done  in  her  honor;  no  thumb-screw  is  used,  no  iron  boot, 
no  scorching  of  flesh,  but  plenty  of  controversial  bruising, 
laceration,  and  even  life-long  maiming.  Less  than  formerly ; 
but  so  long  as  this  sort  of  Truth-worship  has  the  sanction  of 
a  public  that  can  often  understand  nothing  in  a  controversy 
except  personal  sarcasm  or  slanderous  ridicule,  it  is  likely 
to  continue.  The  sufferings  of  its  victims  are  often  as 
little  regarded  as  those  of  the  sacrificial  pig  offered  in  old 
time,  with  what  we  now  regard  as  a  sad  miscalculation  of 
effects. 

One  such  victim  is  my  old  acquaintance,  Merman. 

Twenty  years  ago  Merman  was  a  young  man  of  promise,  a 
conveyancer  with  a  practice  which  had  certainly  budded,  but, 
like  Aaron’s  rod,  seemed  not  destined  to  proceed  further  in 
that  marvellous  activity.  Meanwhile  he  occupied  himself  in 
miscellaneous  periodical-writing,  and  in  a  multifarious  study 
of  moral  and  physical  science.  What  chiefly  attracted  him 
in  all  subjects  were  the  vexed  questions,  which  have  the  ad¬ 
vantage  of  not  admitting  the  decisive  proof  or  disproof  that 
renders  many  ingenious  arguments  superannuated.  Not  that 
Merman  had  a  wrangling  disposition :  he  put  all  his  doubts, 
queries,  and  paradoxes  deferentially ;  contended  without  un- 


280 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


pleasant  heat,  and  only  with  a  sonorous  eagerness,  against  the 
personality  of  Homer  •  expressed  himself  civilly  though  firmly 
on  the  origin  of  language ;  and  had  tact  enough  to  drop  at  the 
right  moment  such  subjects  as  the  ultimate  reduction  of  all 
the  so-called  elementary  substances,  his  own  total  scepticism 
concerning  Manetho’s  chronology,  or  even  the  relation  be¬ 
tween  the  magnetic  condition  of  the  earth  and  the  outbreak  of 
revolutionary  tendencies.  Such  flexibility  was  naturally  much 
helped  by  his  amiable  feeling  toward  woman,  whose  nervous 
system,  he  was  convinced,  would  not  bear  the  continuous 
strain  of  difficult  topics ;  and  also  by  his  willingness  to  con¬ 
tribute  a  song  whenever  the  same  desultory  charmer  proposed 
music.  Indeed,  his  tastes  were  domestic  enough  to  beguile 
him  into  marriage  when  his  resources  were  still  very  moderate 
and  partly  uncertain.  His  friends  wished  that  so  ingenious 
and  agreeable  a  fellow  might  have  more  prosperity  than  they 
ventured  to  hope  for  him ;  their  chief  regret  on  his  account 
being  that  he  did  not  concentrate  his  talent,  and  leave  off 
forming  opinions  on  at  least  half  a  dozen  of  the  subjects  over 
which  he  scattered  his  attention,  especially  now  that  he  had 
married  “  a  nice  little  woman  ”  (the  generic  name  for  ac- 
cpiaintances’  wives  when  they  are  not  markedly  disagreeable). 
He  could  not,  they  observed,  want  all  his  various  knowledge 
and  Laputan  ideas  for  his  periodical-writing  which  brought 
him  most  of  his  bread,  and  he  would  do  well  to  use  his  talents 
in  getting  a  specialty  that  would  fit  him  for  a  post.  Perhaps 
these  well-disposed  persons  were  a  little  rash  in  presuming 
that  fitness  for  a  post  would  be  the  surest  ground  for  getting 
it ;  and,  on  the  whole,  in  now  looking  back  on  their  wishes 
for  Merman,  their  chief  satisfaction  must  be  that  those  wishes 
did  not  contribute  to  the  actual  result. 

For  in  an  evil  hour  Merman  did  concentrate  himself.  He 
had  for  many  years  taken  into  his  interest  the  comparative 
history  of  the  ancient  civilizations,  but  it  had  not  preoccupied 
him  so  as  to  narrow  his  generous  attention  to  everything  else. 
One  sleepless  night,  however  (his  wife  has  more  than  once 
narrated  to  me  the  details  of  an  event  memorable  to  her  as 


HOW  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH. 


281 

the  beginning  of  sorrows),  after  spending  some  hours  over 
the  epoch-making  work  of  Grampus,  a  new  idea  seized  him 
with  regard  to  the  possible  connection  of  certain  symbolic 
monuments  common  to  widely  scattered  races.  Merman 
started  up  in  bed.  The  night  was  cold;  and  the  sudden 
withdrawal  of  warmth  made  his  wife  first  dream  of  a  snow¬ 
ball,  and  then  cry, 

“  What  is  the  matter,  Proteus  ?  ” 

“A  great  matter,  Julia.  That  fellow  Grampus,  whose 
book  is  cried  up  as  a  revelation,  is  all  wrong  about  the  Magi- 
codumbras  and  the  Zuzumotzis,  and  I  have  got  hold  of  the 
right  clew.” 

“  Good  gracious !  does  it  matter  so  much  ?  Don’t  drag 
the  clothes,  dear.” 

“  It  signifies  this,  Julia,  that  if  I  am  right  I  shall  set  the 
world  right ;  I  shall  regenerate  history ;  I  shall  win  the  mind 
of  Europe  to  a  new  view  of  social  origins ;  I  shall  bruise  the 
head  of  many  superstitions.” 

“Oh  no,  dear,  don’t  go  too  far  into  things.  Lie  down 
again.  You  have  been  dreaming.  What  are  the  Madicojum- 
bras  and  Zuzitotzums  ?  I  never  heard  you  talk  of  them 
before.  What  use  can  it  be,  troubling  yourself  about  such 
things  ?  ” 

“That  is  the  way,  Julia!  That  is  the  way  wives  alienate 
their  husbands,  and  make  any  hearth  pleasanter  to  him  than 
his  own.” 

“  What  do  you  mean,  Proteus  ?  ” 

“Why,  if  a  woman  will  not  try  to  understand  her  hus¬ 
band’s  ideas,  or  at  least  to  believe  that  they  are  of  more  value 
than  she  can  understand,  —  if  she  is  to  join  anybody  who 
happens  to  be  against  him,  and  suppose  he  is  a  fool  because 
others  contradict  him,  —  there  is  an  end  of  our  happiness. 
That  is  all  I  have  to  say.” 

“Oh  no,  Proteus,  dear.  I  do  believe  wl  at  you  say  is 
right.  That  is  my  only  guide.  I  am  sure  I  never  have  any 
opinions  in  any  other  way,  —  I  mean  about  subje  cts.  Of  course 
there  are  many  little  things  that  would  t-pn.se  you,  that  you 


282 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


like  me  to  judge  of  for  myself.  I  know  I  said  once  that  I  did 
not  want  you  to  sing  ‘Oh,  ruddier  than  the  cherry/  because  it 
was  not  in  your  voice.  But  I  cannot  remember  ever  differing 
from  you  about  subjects.  I  never  in  my  life  thought  any  one 
cleverer  than  you.” 

Julia  Merman  was  really  “  a  nice  little  woman,”  not  one 
of  the  stately  Dians  sometimes  spoken  of  in  those  terms. 
Her  black  silhouette  had  a  very  infantine  aspect ;  but  she  had 
discernment  and  wisdom  enough  to  act  on  the  strong  hint  of 
that  memorable  conversation,  never  again  giving  her  husband 
the  slightest  ground  for  suspecting  that  she  thought  treason¬ 
ably  of  his  ideas  in  relation  to  the  Magicodumbras  and  Zuzu- 
motzis,  or  in  the  least  relaxed  her  faith  in  his  infallibility 
because  Europe  was  not  also  convinced  of  it.  It  was  well  for 
her  that  she  did  not  increase  her  troubles  in  this  way ;  but 
to  do  her  justice,  what  she  was  chiefly  anxious  about  was  to 
avoid  increasing  her  husband’s  troubles. 

Not  that  these  were  great  in  the  beginning.  In  the  first 
development  and  writing  out  of  his  scheme,  Merman  had  a 
more  intense  kind  of  intellectual  pleasure  than  he  had  ever 
known  before.  His  face  became  more  radiant,  his  general 
view  of  human  prospects  more  cheerful.  Foreseeing  that 
truth  as  presented  by  himself  would  win  the  recognition  of 
his  contemporaries,  he  excused  with  much  liberality  their 
rather  rough  treatment  of  other  theorists,  whose  basis  was 
less  perfect.  His  own  periodical-criticisms  had  never  before 
been  so  amiable ;  he  was  sorry  for  that  unlucky  majority  whom 
the  spirit  of  the  age,  or  some  other  prompting  more  definite 
and  local,  compelled  to  write  without  any  particular  ideas. 
The  possession  of  an  original  theory,  which  has  not  yet  been 
assailed,  must  certainly  sweeten  the  temper  of  a  man  who  is 
not  beforehand  ill-natured.  And  Merman  was  the  reverse  of 
ill-natured.  , 

But  the  hour  of  publication  came ;  and  to  half  a  dozen 
persons,  described  as  the  learned  world  of  two  hemispheres, 
it  became  known  that  Grampus  was  attacked.  This  might 
have  been  a  small  matter ;  for  who  or  what  on  earth,  that  is 


HOW  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH. 


283 


good  for  anything,  is  not  assailed  by  ignorance,  stupidity,  or 
malice,  and  sometimes  even  by  just  objection  ?  But  on  ex¬ 
amination  it  appeared  that  the  attack  might  possibly  be  held 
damaging,  unless  the  ignorance  of  the  author  were  well  ex¬ 
posed,  and  his  pretended  facts  shown  to  be  chimeras  of  that 
remarkably  hideous  kind  begotten  by  imperfect  learning  on 
the  more  feminine  element  of  original  incapacity.  Grampus 
himself  did  not  immediately  cut  open  the  volume  which 
Merman  had  been  careful  to  send  him,  not  without  a  very 
lively  and  shifting  conception  of  the  possible  effects  which 
the  explosive  gift  might  produce  on  the  too  eminent  scholar  — 
effects  that  must  certainly  have  set  in  on  the  third  day  from 
the  despatch  of  the  parcel.  But  in  point  of  fact  Grampus 
knew  nothing  of  the  book  until  his  friend  Lord  Narwhal  sent 
him  an  American  newspaper  containing  a  spirited  article  by 
the  well-known  Professor  Sperm  N.  Whale,  which  was  rather 
equivocal  in  its  bearing,  the  passages  quoted  from  Merman 
being  of  rather  a  telling  sort,  and  the  paragraphs  which 
seemed  to  blow  defiance  being  unaccountably  feeble,  coming 
from  so  distinguished  a  Cetacean.  Then,  by  another  post, 
arrived  letters  from  Butzkopf  and  Dugong,  both  men  whose 
signatures  were  familiar  to  the  Teutonic  world,  in  the  “  Selten- 
erscheinender  Monat-schrift,”  or  Hyrick  for  the  insertion  of 
Split  Hairs,  asking  their  Master  whether  he  meant  to  take  up 
the  combat,  because,  in  the  contrary  case,  both  were  ready. 

Thus  America  and  Germany  were  roused,  though  England 
was  still  drowsy ;  and  it  seemed  time  now  for  Grampus  to 
find  Merman’s  book  under  the  heap,  and  cut  it  open.  Eor  his 
own  part,  he  was  perfectly  at  ease  about  his  system ;  but  this 
is  a  world  in  which  the  truth  requires  defence,  and  specious 
falsehood  must  be  met  with  exposure.  Grampus  having  once 
looked  through  the  book,  no  longer  wanted  any  urging  to 
write  the  most  crushing  of  replies.  This,  and  nothing  less 
than  this,  was  due  from  him  to  the  cause  of  sound  inquiry ; 
and  the  punishment  would  cost  him  little  pains.  In  three 
weeks  from  that  time  the  palpitating  Merman  saw  his  book 
announced  in  the  programme  of  the  leading  Review.  !No 


284 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


need  for  Grampus  to  put  his  signature.  Who  else  had  his 
vast  yet  microscopic  knowledge,  who  else  his  power  of  epi¬ 
thet  ?  This  article  —  in  which  Merman  was  pilloried  and  as 
good  as  mutilated,  for  he  was  shown  to  have  neither  ear 
nor  nose  for  the  subtleties  of  philological  and  archaeological 
study  —  was  much  read  and  more  talked  of ;  not  because  of 
any  interest  in  the  system  of  Grampus,  or  any  precise  con¬ 
ception  of  the  danger  attending  lax  views  of  the  Magicodum- 
bras  and  Zuzumotzis,  but  because  the  sharp  epigrams  with 
which  the  victim  was  lacerated,  and  the  soaring  fountains  of 
acrid  mud  which  were  shot  upward  and  poured  over  the  fresh 
wounds,  were  found  amusing  in  recital.  A  favorite  passage 
was  one  in  which  a  certain  kind  of  socialist  was  described  as 
a  creature  of  the  walrus  kind,  having  a  phantasmal  resem¬ 
blance  to  higher  animals  when  seen  by  ignorant  minds  in  the 
twilight,  dabbling  or  hobbling  in  first  one  element  and  then 
the  other,  without  parts  or  organs  suited  to  either ;  in  fact, 
one  of  Nature’s  impostors,  who  could  not  be  said  to  have 
any  artful  pretences,  since  a  congenital  incompetence  to  all 
precision  of  aim  and  movement  made  their  every  action  a 
pretence  —  just  as  a  being  born  in  doeskin  gloves  would  nec¬ 
essarily  pass  a  judgment  on  surfaces,  but  we  all  know  what 
his  judgment  would  be  worth.  In  drawing-room  circles,  and 
for  the  immediate  hour,  this  ingenious  comparison  was  as  dam¬ 
aging  as  the  showing-up  of  Merman’s  mistakes,  and  the  mere 
smattering  of  linguistic  and  historical  knowledge  which  he  had 
presumed  to  be  a  sufficient  basis  for  theorizing;  but  the  more 
learned. cited  his  blunders  aside  to  each  other,  and  laughed  the 
laugh  of  the  initiated.  In  fact,  Merman’s  was  a  remarkable 
case  of  sudden  notoriety.  In  London  drums  and  clubs  he 
was  spoken  of  abundantly  as  one  who  had  written  ridicu¬ 
lously  about  the  Magicodumbras  and  Zuzumotzis  :  the  leaders 
of  conversation,  whether  Christians,  Jews,  infidels,  or  of  any 
other  confession,  except  the  confession  of  ignorance,  pro¬ 
nouncing  him  shallow  and  indiscreet,  if  not  presumptuous  and 
absurd.  He  was  heard  of  at  Warsaw,  and  even  Paris  took 
knowledge  of  him.  M.  Cachalot  had  not  read  either  Grampus 


HOW  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH. 


285 


or  Merman,  but  heard  of  their  dispute  in  time  to  insert  a 
paragraph  upon  it  in  his  brilliant  work,  “  L’Orient  au  Point  de 
Vue  Actuel,”  in  which  he  was  aispassionate  enough  to  speak 
of  Grampus  as  possessing  a  c  ip  d’eeil  presque  franpais  in  mat¬ 
ters  of  historical  interpretation,  and  of  Merman  as  neverthe¬ 
less  an  objector  qui  merite  d'etre  connu.  M.  Porpesse,  also, 
availing  himself  of  M.  Cachalot’s  knowledge,  reproduced  it  in 
an  article  with  certain  additions,  which  it  is  only  fair  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  as  his  own,  implying  that  the  vigorous  English  of 
Grampus  was  not  always  as  correct  as  a  Frenchman  could  de¬ 
sire,  while  Merman’s  objections  were  more  sophistical  than 
solid.  Presently,  indeed,  there  appeared  an  able  ex  trait  of 
Grampus’s  article  in  the  valuable  “  Rapporteur  Scientifique 
et  Historique,”  and  Merman’s  mistakes  were  thus  brought 
under  the  notice  of  certain  Frenchmen  who  are  among  the 
masters  of  those  who  know  on  Oriental  subjects.  In  a  word, 
Merman,  though  not  extensively  read,  was  extensively  read 
about. 

Meanwhile,  how  did  he  like  it  ?  Perhaps  nobody,  except 
his  wife,  for  a  moment  reflected  on  that.  An  amused  society 
considered  that  he  was  severely  punished,  but  did  not  take 
the  trouble  to  imagine  his  sensations ;  indeed,  this  would  have 
been  a  difficulty  for  persons  less  sensitive  and  excitable  than 
Merman  himself.  Perhaps  that  popular  comparison  of  the 
walrus  had  truth  enough  to  bite  and  blister  on  thorough  ap¬ 
plication,  even  if  exultant  ignorance  had  not  applauded  it. 
But  it  is  well  known  that  the  walrus,  though  not  in  the  least 
a  malignant  animal,  if  allowed  to  display  its  remarkably  plain 
person  and  blundering  performances  at  ease  in  any  element 
it  chooses,  becomes  desperately  savage,  and  musters  alarming 
auxiliaries  when  attacked  or  hurt.  In  this  characteristic, 
at  least,  Merman  resembled  the  walrus.  And  now  he  con¬ 
centrated  himself  with  a  vengeance.  That  his  counter-theory 
was  fundamentally  the  right  one  he  had  a  genuine  conviction, 
whatever  collateral  mistakes  he  might  have  committed ;  and 
his  bread  would  not  cease  to  be  bitter  to  him  until  he  had 
convinced  his  contemporaries  that  Grampus  had  used  his 


286 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


minute  learning  as  a  dust-cloud  to  hide  sophistical  evasions  — 
that,  in  fact,  minute  learning  was  an  obstacle  to  clear-sighted 
judgment,  more  especially  with  regard  to  the  Magicodumbras 
and  Zuzumotzis,  and  that  the  best  preparation  in  this  matter 
was  a  wide  survey  of  history,  and  a  diversified  observation  of 
men.  Still,  Merman  was  resolved  to  muster  all  the  learning 
within  his  reach,  and  he  wandered  day  and  night  through 
many  wildernesses  of  German  print ;  he  tried  compendious 
methods  of  learning  Oriental  tongues,  and,  so  to  speak,  get¬ 
ting  at  the  marrow  of  languages  independently  of  the  bones, 
for  the  chance  of  finding  details  to  corroborate  his  own  views, 
or  possibly  even  to  detect  Grampus  in  some  oversight  or  tex 
tual  tampering.  All  other  work  was  neglected  ;  rare  clients 
were  sent  away,  and  amazed  editors  found  this  maniac  indif¬ 
ferent  to  his  chance  of  getting  book-parcels  from  them.  It 
was  many  months  before  Merman  had  satisfied  himself  that 
he  was  strong  enough  to  face  round  upon  his  adversary.  But 
at  last  he  had  prepared  sixty  condensed  pages  of  eager  argu¬ 
ment,  which  seemed  to  him  worthy  to  rank  with  the  best 
models  of  controversial  writing.  He  had  acknowledged  his 
mistakes,  but  had  restated  his  theory,  so  as  to  show  that  it  was 
left  intact  in  spite  of  them ;  and  he  had  even  found  cases  in 
which  Ziphius,  Microps,  Scrag  Whale  the  explorer,  and  other 
Cetaceans  of  unanswerable  authority,  were  decidedly  at  issue 
with  Grampus.  Especially  a  passage  cited  by  this  last  from 
that  greatest  of  fossils,  Megalosaurus,  was  demonstrated  by 
Merman  to  be  capable  of  three  different  interpretations,  all 
preferable  to  that  chosen  by  Grampus,  who  took  the  words 
in  their  most  literal  sense ;  for  (1)  the  incomparable  Saurian, 
alike  unequalled  in  close  observation  and  far-glancing  com¬ 
prehensiveness,  might  have  meant  those  words  ironically ; 
(2)  motzis  was  probably  a  false  reading  for  potzis,  in  which 
case  its  bearing  was  reversed ;  and  (3)  it  is  known  that  in 
the  age  of  the  Saurians  there  were  conceptions  about  the  mot¬ 
zis  which  entirely  remove  it  from  the  category  of  things  com¬ 
prehensible  in  an  age  when  Saurians  run  ridiculously  small : 
all  which  views  were  godfathered  by  names  quite  fit  to  be 


HOW  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH. 


287 


ranked  with  that  of  Grampus.  In  fine,  Merman  wound  up 
nis  rejoinder  by  sincerely  thanking  the  eminent  adversary, 
without  whose  fierce  assault  he  might  not  have  undertaken  a 
revision,  in  the  course  of  which  he  had  met  with  unexpected 
and  striking  confirmations  of  his  own  fundamental  views. 
Evidently  Merman’s  anger  was  at  white  heat.  , 

The  rejoinder  being  complete,  all  that  remained  was  to  find 
a  suitable  medium  for  its  publication.  This  was  not  so  easy. 
Distinguished  mediums  would  not  lend  themselves  to  con¬ 
tradictions  of  Grampus;  or  if  they  would,  Merman’s  article 
was  too  long  and  too  abstruse,  while  he  would  not  consent  to 
leave  anything  out  of  an  article  which  had  no  superfluities,  — 
for  all  this  happened  years  ago,  when  the  world  was  a  differ¬ 
ent  stage.  At  last,  however,  he  got  his  rejoinder  printed,  and 
not  on  hard  terms,  since  the  medium,  in  every  sense  modest, 
did  not  ask  him  to  pay  for  its  insertion. 

But  if  Merman  expected  to  call  out  Grampus  again,  he 
was  mistaken.  Everybody  felt  it  too  absurd  that  Merman 
should  undertake  to  correct  Grampus  in  matters  of  erudition, 
and  an  eminent  man  has  something  else  to  do  than  to  refute 
a  petty  objector  twice  over.  What  was  essential  had  been 
done :  the  public  had  been  enabled  to  form  a  true  judgment 
of  Merman’s  incapacity.  The  Magicodumbras  and  Zuzumotzis 
were  but  subsidiary  elements  in  Grampus’s  system,  and  Mer¬ 
man  might  now  be  dealt  with  by  younger  members  of  the 
Master’s  school.  But  he  had  at  least  the  satisfaction  of  find¬ 
ing  that  he  had  raised  a  discussion  which  would  not  be  let 
die.  The  followers  of  Grampus  took  it  up  with  an  ardor  and 
industry  of  research  worthy  of  their  exemplar.  Butzkopf 
made  it  the  subject  of  an  elaborate  Einleitung  to  his  impor¬ 
tant  work  “  Die  Bedeutung  des  ^Egyptischen  Labyrinthes  ;  ” 
and  Dugong,  in  a  remarkable  address  which  he  delivered  to 
a  learned  society  in  Central  Europe,  introduced  Merman’s 
theory  with  so  much  power  of  sarcasm  that  it  became  a  theme 
of  more  or  less  derisive  allusion  to  men  of  many  tongues. 
Merman  with  his  Magicodumbras  and  Zuzumotzis  was  on  the 
way  to  become  a  proverb,  being  used  illustratively  by  many 


288 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


able  journalists,  who  took  those  names  of  questionable  things 
to  be  Merman’s  own  invention — “than  which,”  said  one  of  the 
graver  guides,  “  we  can  recall  few  more  melancholy  examples 
of  speculative  aberration.”  Naturally,  the  subject  passed  into 
popular  literature,  and  figured  very  commonly  in  advertised 
programmes.  The  fluent  Loligo,  the  formidable  Shark,  and 
a  younger  member  of  his  remarkable  family,  known  as  S.  Cat- 
ulus,  made  a  special  reputation  by  their  numerous  articles, 
eloquent,  lively,  or  abusive,  all  on  the  same  theme,  under 
titles  ingeniously  varied,  alliterative,  sonorous,  or  boldly  fan¬ 
ciful  —  such  as,  “  Moments  with  Mr.  Merman,”  “  Mr.  Merman 
and  the  Magicodumbras,”  “  Greenland  Grampus  and  Proteus 
Merman,”  “  Grampian  Heights  and  their  Climbers,  or  the 
New  Excelsior.”  They  tossed  him  on  short  sentences ;  they 
swathed  him  in  paragraphs  of  winding  imagery ;  they  found 
him  at  once  a  mere  plagiarist  and  a  theorizer  of  unexampled 
perversity,  ridiculously  wrong  about  potzis  and  ignorant  of 
Pali ;  they  hinted,  indeed,  at  certain  things  which  to  their 
knowledge  he  had  silently  brooded  over  in  his  boyhood,  and 
seemed  tolerably  well  assured  that  this  preposterous  attempt 
to  gainsay  an  incomparable  Cetacean  of  world-wide  fame  had 
its  origin  in  a  peculiar  mixture  of  bitterness  and  eccentricity 
which,  rightly  estimated  and  seen  in  its  definite  proportions, 
would  furnish  the  best  key  to  his  argumentation.  All  alike 
were  sorry  for  Merman’s  lack  of  sound  learning;  but  how 
could  their  readers  be  sorry?  Sound  learning  would  not 
have  been  amusing;  and  as  it  was,  Merman  was  made  to 
furnish  these  readers  with  amusement  at  no  expense  of  trouble 
on  their  part.  Even  burlesque-writers  looked  into  his  book 
to  see  where  it  could  be  made  use  of ;  and  those  who  did  not 
know  him  were  desirous  of  meeting  him  at  dinner,  as  one 
likely  to  feed  their  comic  vein. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  made  a  serious  figure  in  sermons 
under  the  name  of  “  Some  ”  or  “  Others,”  who  had  attempted 
presumptuously  to  scale  eminences  too  high  and  arduous  for 
human  ability,  and  had  given  an  example  of  ignominious 
failure,  edifying  to  the  humble  Christian. 


HOW  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH. 


289 


All  this  might  be  very  advantageous  for  able  persons  whose 
superfluous  fund  of  expression  needed  a  paying  investment ; 
but  the  effect  on  Merman  himself  was  unhappily  not  so  tran¬ 
sient  as  the  busy  writing  and  speaking  of  which  he  had  be¬ 
come  the  occasion.  His  certainty  that  he  was  right  naturally 
got  stronger  in  proportion  as  the  spirit  of  resistance  was 
stimulated.  The  scorn  and  unfairness  with  which  he  felt 
himself  to  have  been  treated,  by  those  really  competent  to 
appropriate  his  ideas,  had  galled  him  and  made  a  chronic 
sore ;  and  the  exultant  chorus  of  the  incompetent  seemed  a 
pouring  of  vinegar  on  his  wound.  His  brain  became  a  reg¬ 
istry  of  the  foolish  and  ignorant  objections  made  against 
him,  and  of  continually  amplified  answers  to  these  objec¬ 
tions.  Unable  to  get  his  answers  printed,  he  had  recourse 
to  that  more  primitive  mode  of  publication,  oral  transmission, 
or  button-holding,  now  generally  regarded  as  a  troublesome 
survival ;  and  the  once  pleasant,  flexible  Merman  was  on  the 
way  to  be  shunned  as  a  bore.  His  interest  in  new  acquain¬ 
tances  turned  chiefly  on  the  possibility  that  they  would  care 
about  the  Magicodumbras  and  Zuzumotzis ;  that  they  would 
listen  to  his  complaints  and  exposures  of  unfairness,  and  not 
only  accept  copies  of  what  he  had  written  on  the  subject,  but 
send  him  appreciative  letters  in  acknowledgment.  Repeated 
disappointment  of  such  hopes  tended  to  embitter  him ;  and 
not  the  less  because  after  awhile  the  fashion  of  mentioning 
him  died  out,  allusions  to  his  theory  were  less  understood, 
and  people  could  only  pretend  to  remember  it.  And  all  the 
while  Merman  was  perfectly  sure  that  his  very  opponents, 
who  had  knowledge  enough  to  be  capable  judges,  were  aware 
that  his  book,  whatever  errors  of  statement  they  might  detect 
in  it,  had  served  as  a  sort  of  divining-rod,  pointing  out  hid¬ 
den  sources  of  historical  interpretation  ;  nay,  his  jealous  ex 
animation  discerned  in  a  new  work  by  Grampus  himself  a 
certain  shifting  of  ground,  which  —  so  poor  Merman  declared 
—  was  the  sign  of  an  intention  gradually  to  appropriate  the 
views  of  the  man  he  had  attempted  to  brand  as  an  ignorant 
impostor. 


290 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


And  Julia?  And  the  housekeeping,  —  the  rent,  food,  and 
clothing,  which  controversy  can  hardly  supply,  unless  it  be 
of  the  kind  that  serves  as  a  recommendation  to  certain  posts  ? 
Controversial  pamphlets  have  been  known  to  earn  large 
plums  ;  but  nothing  of  the  sort  could  be  expected  from  un¬ 
practical  heresies  about  the  Magicodumbras  and  Zuzumotzis, 
—  painfully  the  contrary.  Merman’s  reputation  as  a  sober 
thinker,  a  safe  writer,  a  sound  lawyer,  was  irretrievably 
injured;  the  distractions  of  controversy  had  caused  him  to 
neglect  useful  editorial  connections,  and  indeed  his  dwindling 
care  for  miscellaneous  subjects  made  hi&  contributions  too 
dull  to  be  desirable.  Even  if  he  could  now  have  given  a  new 
turn  to  his  concentration,  and  applied  his  talents  so  as  to  be 
ready  to  show  himself  an  exceptionally  qualified  lawyer,  he 
would  only  have  been  like  an  architect  in  competition,  too 
late  with  his  superior  plans :  he  would  not  have  had  an 
opportunity  of  showing  his  qualification.  He  was  thrown 
out  of  the  course.  The  small  capital  which  had  filled  up  defi¬ 
ciencies  of  income  was  almost  exhausted,  and  Julia,  in  the 
effort  to  make  supplies  equal  to  wants,  had  to  use  much  in¬ 
genuity  in  diminishing  the  wants.  The  brave  and  affection¬ 
ate  woman,  whose  small  outline,  so  unimpressive  against  an 
illuminated  background,  held  within  it  a  good  share  of  fem¬ 
inine  heroism,  did  her  best  to  keep  up  the  charm  of  home 
and  soothe  her  husband’s  excitement,  — parting  with  the  best 
jewel  among  her  wedding  presents  in  order  to  pay  rent, 
without  ever  hinting  to  her  husband  that  this  sad  result  had 
come  of  his  undertaking  to  convince  people  who  only  laughed 
at  him.  She  was  a  resigned  little  creature,  and  reflected 
that  some  husbands  took  to  drinking  and  others  to  forgery ; 
hers  had  only  taken  to  the  Magicodumbras  and  Zuzumotzis, 
and  was  not  unkind  —  only  a  little  more  indifferent  to  her 
and  the  two  children  than  she  had  ever  expected  he  would 
be;  his  mind  was  eaten  up  with  “subjects,”  and  constantly 
a  little  angry,  not  with  her,  but  with  everybody  else,  es¬ 
pecially  those  who  were  celebrated. 

This  was  the  sad  truth.  Merman  felt  himself  ill-used  bj 


HOW  WE  ENCOURAGE  RESEARCH. 


291 


the  world,  and  thought  very  much  worse  of  the  world  in  con¬ 
sequence.  The  gall  of  his  adversaries’  ink  had  been  sucked 
into  his  system  and  ran  in  his  blood.  He  was  still  in  the 
prime  of  life,  but  his  mind  was  aged  by  that  eager,  monoto¬ 
nous  construction  which  comes  of  feverish  excitement  on  a 
single  topic,  and  uses  up  the  intellectual  strength. 

Merman  had  never  been  a  rich  man,  but  lie  was  now  con¬ 
spicuously  poor,  and  in  need  of  the  friends  who  had  power 
or  interest  which  he  believed  they  could  exert  on  his  behalf. 
Their  omitting  or  declining  to  give  this  help  could  not  seem 
to  him  so  clearly  as  to  them  an  inevitable  consequence  of  his 
having  become  impracticable,  or  at  least  of  liis  passing  for  a 
man  whose  views  were  not  likely  to  be  safe  and  sober.  Each 
friend  in  turn  offended  him,  though  unwillingly,  and  was 
suspected  of  wishing  to  shake  him  off.  It  was  not  altogether 
so  ;  but  poor  Merman’s  society  had  undeniably  ceased  to  be 
attractive,  and  it  was  difficult  to  help  him.  At  last  the  pres¬ 
sure  of  want  urged  him  to  try  for  a  post  far  beneath  his 
earlier  prospects,  and  he  gained  it.  He  holds  it  still,  for  he 
has  no  vices,  and  his  domestic  life  has  kept  up  a  sweetening 
current  of  motive  around  and  within  him.  Nevertheless,  the 
bitter  flavor  mingling  itself  with  all  topics,  the  premature 
weariness  and  withering,  are  irrevocably  there.  It  is  as  if 
he  had  gone  through  a  disease  which  alters  what  we  call  the 
constitution.  He  has  long  ceased  to  talk  eagerly  of  the  ideas 
which  possess  him,  or  to  attempt  making  proselytes.  The 
dial  has  moved  onward,  and  he  himself  sees  many  of  his  for¬ 
mer  guesses  in  a  new  light.  On  the  other  hand,  he  has  seen 
what  he  foreboded,  that  the  main  idea  which  was  at  the  root 
of  his  too  rash  theorizing  has  been  adopted  by  Grampus  and 
received  with  general  respect,  no  reference  being  heard  to 
the  ridiculous  figure  this  important  conception  made  when 
ushered  in  by  the  incompetent  “  Others.” 

Now  and  then,  on  rare  occasions,  when  a  sympathetic 
tete-a-tete  has  restored  some  of  his  old  expansiveness,  he  will 
tell  a  companion  in  a  railway-carriage,  or  other  place  of  meet¬ 
ing  favorable  to  autobiographical  confidences,  what  lias  been 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


^■2. 

the  course  of  things  in  his  particular  case,  as  an  example  of 
the  justice  to  be  expected  of  the  world.  The  companion 
usually  allows  for  the  bitterness  of  a  disappointed  ma.*\ 
and  is  secretly  disinclined  to  believe  that  Grampus  was  to 
blame. 


A  MAN  SURPRISED  AT  HIS  ORIGINALITY. 


MONG  the  many  acute  sayings  of  La  Rochefoucauld, 


there  is  hardly  one  more  acute  than  this :  “  La  plus 
grande  ambition  n’en  a  pas  la  moindre  apparence  lorsqu’elle 
se  rencontre  dans  une  impossibility  absolue  d’arriver  oil  elle 
aspire.”  Some  of  us  might  do  well  to  use  this  hint  in  our 
treatment  of  acquaintances  and  friends;  from  whom  we  are 
expecting  gratitude  because  we  are  so  very  kind  in  thinking 
of  them,  inviting  them,  and  even  listening  to  what  they  say 
—  considering  how  insignificant  they  must  feel  themselves  to 
be.  We  are  often  fallaciously  confident  in  supposing  that 
our  friend’s  state  of  mind  is  appropriate  to  our  moderate  es¬ 
timate  of  his  importance,  —  almost  as  if  we  imagined  the  hum¬ 
ble  mollusk  (so  useful  as  an  illustration)  to  have  a  sense  of  his 
own  exceeding  softness  and  low  place  in  the  scale  of  being. 
Your  mollusk,  on  the  contrary,  is  inwardly  objecting  to  every 
other  grade  of  solid,  rather  than  to  himself.  Accustomed  to 
observe  what  we  think  an  unwarrantable  conceit  exhibiting 
itself  in  ridiculous  pretensions  and  forwardness  to  play  the 
lion’s  part,  in  obvious  self-complacency  and  loud  peremptori¬ 
ness,  we  are  not  on  the  alert  to  detect  the  egoistic  claims  of 
a  more  exorbitant  kind,  often  hidden  under  an  apparent  neu¬ 
trality  or  an  acquiescence  in  being  put  out  of  the  question. 

Thoughts  of  this  kind  occurred  to  me  yesterday,  when  1 
saw  the  name  of  Lentulus  in  the  obituary.  The  majority  of 
his  acquaintances,  I  imagine,  have  always  thought  of  him  as 
a  man  justly  unpretending  and  as  nobody’s  rival ;  but  some 
of  them  have  perhaps  been  struck  with  surprise  at  his  reserve 
in  praising  the  works  of  his  contemporaries,  and  have  now 


294 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


and  then  felt  themselves  in  need  of  a  key  to  his  remarks  on 
men  of  celebrity  in  various  departments.  He  was  a  man  of 
fair  position,  deriving  his  income  from  a  business  in  which 
he  did  nothing,  at  leisure  to  frequent  clubs  and  at  ease  in 
giving  dinners,  —  well -looking,  polite,  and  generally  accept¬ 
able  in  society  as  a  part  of  what  we  may  call  its  bread-crumb, 
the  neutral  basis  needful  for  the  plums  and  spice.  Why, 
then,  did  he  speak  of  the  modern  Maro  or  the  modern  Flaccus 
with  a  peculiarity  in  his  tone  of  assent  to  other  people’s 
praise  which  might  almost  have  led  you  to  suppose  that  the 
eminent  poet  had  borrowed  money  of  him  and  showed  an  in¬ 
disposition  to  repay  ?  He  had  no  criticism  to  offer,  no  sign 
of  objection  more  specific  than  a  slight  cough,  a  scarcely  per¬ 
ceptible  pause  before  assenting,  and  an  air  of  self-control  in 
his  utterance — as  if  certain  considerations  had  determined 
him  not  to  inform  against  the  so-called  poet,  who,  to  his 
knowledge,  was  a  mere  versifier.  If  you  had  questioned  him 
closely,  he  would  perhaps  have  confessed  that  he  did  think 
something  better  might  be  done  in  the  way  of  Eclogues  and 
Georgies,  or  of  Odes  and  Epodes,  and  that  to  his  mind  poetry 
was  something  very  different  from  what  had  hitherto  been 
known  under  that  name. 

For  my  own  part,  being  of  a  superstitious  nature,  given 
readily  to  imagine  alarming  causes,  I  immediately,  on  first 
getting  these  mystic  hints  from  Lentulus,  concluded  that  he 
held  a  number  of  entirely  original  poems,  or  at  the  very  least 
a  revolutionary  treatise  on  poetics,  in  that  melancholy  manu¬ 
script  state  to  which  works  excelling  all  that  is  ever  printed 
are  necessarily  condemned ;  and  I  was  long  timid  in  speaking 
of  the  poets  when  he  was  present.  For  what  might  not  Len¬ 
tulus  have  done,  or  be  profoundly  aware  of,  that  would  make 
my  ignorant  impressions  ridiculous  ?  One  cannot  well  be 
sure  of  the  negative  in  such  a  case,  except  through  certain 
positives  that  bear  witness  to  it ;  and  those  witnesses  are  not 
always  to  be  got  hold  of.  But  time  wearing  on,  I  perceived 
that  the  attitude  of  Lentulus  toward  the  philosophers  was 
essentially  the  same  as  his  attitude  toward  the  poets ;  nay, 


A  MAN  SURPRISED  AT  HIS  ORIGINALITY.  295 


there  was  something  so  much  more  decided  in  his  mode  of 
closing  his  mouth  after  brief  speech  on  the  former,  there  was 
such  an  air  of  rapt  consciousness  in  his  private  hints  as  to 
his  conviction  that  all  thinking  hitherto  had  been  an  elab¬ 
orate  mistake,  and  as  to  his  own  power  of  conceiving  a  sound 
basis  for  a  lasting  superstructure,  that  I  began  to  believe  less 
in  the  poetical  stores,  and  to  infer  that  the  line  of  Lentulus 
lay  rather  in  the  rational  criticism  of  our  beliefs  and  in  sys¬ 
tematic  construction.  In  this  case  I  did  not  figure  to  myself 
the  existence  of  formidable  manuscripts  ready  for  the  press  ; 
for  great  thinkers  are  known  to  carry  their  theories  growing 
within  their  minds  long  before  committing  them  to  paper, 
and  the  ideas  which  made  a  new  passion  for  them  when  their 
locks  were  jet  or  auburn,  remain  perilously  unwritten,  an 
inwardly  developing  condition  of  their  successive  selves, 
until  the  locks  are  gray  or  scanty.  I  only  meditated  im- 
provingly  on  the  way  in  which  a  man  of  exceptional  faculties, 
and  even  carrying  within  him  some  of  that  fierce  refiner’s  fire 
which  is  to  purge  away  the  dross  of  human  error,  may  move 
about  in  society  totally  unrecognized,  regarded  as  a  person 
whose  opinion  is  superfluous,  and  only  rising  into  a  power  in 
emergencies  of  threatened  black-balling.  Imagine  a  Des¬ 
cartes  or  a  Locke  being  recognized  for  nothing  more  than  a 
good  fellow  and  a  perfect  gentleman  ;  what  a  painful  view 
does  such  a  picture  suggest  of  impenetrable  dulness  in  the 
society  around  them  ! 

I  would  at  all  times  rather  be  reduced  to  a  cheaper  esti¬ 
mate  of  a  particular  person,  if  by  that  means  I  can  get  a  more 
cheerful  view  of  my  fellow-men  generally;  and  I  confess 
that,  in  a  certain  curiosity  which  led  me  to  cultivate  Lentu- 
lus’s  acquaintance,  my  hope  leaned  to  the  discovery  that  he 
was  a  less  remarkable  man  than  he  had  seemed  to  imply.  It 
would  have  been  a  grief  to  discover  that  he  was  bitter  or 
malicious ;  but  by  finding  him  to  be  neither  a  mighty  poet, 
nor  a  revolutionary  poetical  critic,  nor  an  epoch-making  phi¬ 
losopher,  my  admiration  for  the  poets  and  thinkers  whom  he 
rated  so  low  would  recover  all  its  buoyancy,  and  I  should 


296 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


not  be  left  to  trust  to  that  very  suspicious  sort  of  merit 
which  constitutes  an  exception  in  the  history  of  mankind, 
and  recommends  itself  as  the  total  abolitionist  of  all  previous 
claims  on  our  confidence.  You  are  not  greatly  surprised  at 
the  infirm  logic  of  the  coachman  who  would  persuade  you 
to  engage  him  by  insisting  that  any  other  would  be  sure  to 
rob  you  in  the  matter  of  hay  and  corn,  thus  demanding  a 
difficult  belief  in  him  as  the  sole  exception  from  the  frailties 
of  his  calling ;  but  it  is  rather  astonishing  that  the  whole¬ 
sale  decriers  of  mankind  and  its  performances  should  be 
even  more  unwary  in  their  reasoning  than  the  coachman, 
since  each  of  them  not  merely  confides  in  your  regarding 
himself  as  an  exception,  but  overlooks  the  almost  certain 
fact  that  you  are  wondering  whether  he  inwardly  excepts 
you.  Now,  conscious  of  entertaining  some  common  opin¬ 
ions  which  seemed  to  fall  under  the  mildly  intimated  but 
sweeping  ban  of  Lentulus,  my  self-complacency  was  a  little 
concerned. 

Hence  I  deliberately  attempted  to  draw  out  Lentulus  in 
private  dialogue,  for  it  is  the  reverse  of  injury  to  a  man  to 
offer  him  that  hearing  which  he  seems  to  have  found  nowhere 
else.  And  for  whatever  purposes  silence  may  be  equal  to 
gold,  it  cannot  be  safely  taken  as  an  indication  of  specific 
ideas.  I  sought  to  know  why  Lentulus  was  more  than  indif¬ 
ferent  to  the  poets,  and  what  was  that  new  poetry  which  he 
had  either  written  or,  as  to  its  principles,  distinctly  conceived. 
But  I  presently  found  that  he  knew  very  little  of  any  partic¬ 
ular  poet,  and  had  a  general  notion  of  poetry  as  the  use  of 
artificial  language  to  express  unreal  sentiments  ;  he  instanced 
“  The  Giaour,”  “  Lalla  Rookh,”  “  The  Pleasures  of  Hope,” 
and  “  Ruin  seize  thee,  ruthless  King,”  —  adding,  “  and  plenty 
more.”  On  my  observing  that  he  probably  preferred  a  larger, 
simpler  style,  he  emphatically  assented.  “Have  you  not,” 
said  I,  “written  something  of  that  order?”  “No,  but  I 
often  compose  as  I  go  along.  I  see  how  things  might  be 
written  as  fine  as  Ossian,  only  with  true  ideas.  The  world 
has  no  notion  what  poetry  will  be.” 


A  MAN  SURPRISED  AT  HIS  ORIGINALITY.  297 


It  was  impossible  to  disprove  this,  and  I  am  always  glad 
to  believe  that  the  poverty  of  our  imagination  is  no  measure 
of  the  world’s  resources.  Our  posterity  will  no  doubt  get 
fuel  in  ways  that  we  are  unable  to  devise  for  them.  But 
what  this  conversation  persuaded  me  of  was,  that  the  birth 
with  which  the  mind  of  Lentulus  was  pregnant  could  not  be 
poetry,  though  I  did  not  question  that  he  composed  as  he 
went  along,  and  that  the  exercise  was  accompanied  wfith  a 
great  sense  of  power.  This  is  a  frequent  experience  in 
dreams,  and  much  of  our  waking  experience  is  but  a  dream 
in  the  daylight.  Nay,  for  wrhat  I  saw,  the  compositions 
might  be  fairly  classed  as  Ossianic.  But  I  was  satisfied  that 
Lentulus  could  not  disturb  my  grateful  admiration  for  the 
poets  of  all  ages  by  eclipsing  them,  or  by  putting  them  under 
a  new  electric  light  of  criticism. 

Still,  he  had  himself  thrown  the  chief  emphasis  of  his 
protest  and  his  consciousness  of  corrective  illumination  on 
the  philosophic  thinking  of  our  race  ;  and  his  tone  in  assuring 
me  that  everything  which  had  been  done  in  that  way  was 
wrong,  that  Plato,  Robert  Owen,  and  Dr.  Tuftle,  who  wrote 
in  the  “  Regulator,”  were  all  equally  mistaken,  gave  my 
superstitious  nature  a  thrill  of  anxiety.  After  what  had 
passed  about  the  poets,  it  did  not  seem  likely  that  Lentulus 
had  all  systems  by  heart ;  but  who  could  say  he  had  not 
seized  that  thread  which  may  somewhere  hang  out  loosely 
from  the  web  of  things,  and  be  the  clew  of  unravelment  ? 
We  need  not  go  far  to  learn  that  a  prophet  is  not  made  by 
erudition.  Lentulus  at  least  had  not  the  bias  of  a  school ; 
and  if  it  turned  out  that  he  was  in  agreement  with  any  cel¬ 
ebrated  thinker,  ancient  or  modern,  the  agreement  would 
have  the  value  of  an  undesigned  coincidence  not  due  to  for¬ 
gotten  reading.  It  was  therefore  with  renewed  curiosity 
that  I  engaged  him  on  this  large  subject,  the  universal 
erroneousness  of  thinking  up  to  the  period  when  Lentulus 
began  that  process.  And  here  I  found  him  more  copious 
than  on  the  theme  of  poetry.  He  admitted  that  he  did  con¬ 
template  writing  down  his  thoughts,  but  his  difficulty  was 


298 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


their  abundance.  Apparently  he  was  like  the  wood-cuttei 
entering  the  thick  forest,  and  saying,  “  Where  shall  I  begin  ?  ” 
The  same  obstacle  appeared  in  a  minor  degree  to  cling  about 
his  verbal  exposition,  and  accounted  perhaps  for  his  rather 
helter-skelter  choice  of  remarks  bearing  on  the  number  of 
unaddressed  letters  sent  to  the  post-office ;  on  what  logic 
really  is,  as  tending  to  support  the  buoyancy  of  human  me¬ 
diums  and  mahogany  tables ;  on  the  probability  of  all  mir¬ 
acles  under  all  religions  when  explained  by  hidden  laws,  and 
my  unreasonableness  in  supposing  that  their  profuse  occur¬ 
rence  at  half  a  guinea  an  hour  in  recent  times  was  anything 
more  than  a  coincidence ;  on  the  hap-hazard  way  in  which 
marriages  are  determined  —  showing  the  baselessness  of 
social  and  moral  schemes ;  and  on  his  expectation  that  he 
should  offend  the  scientific  world  when  he  told  them  what 
he  thought  of  electricity  as  an  agent. 

No  man’s  appearance  could  be  graver  or  more  gentleman¬ 
like  than  that  of  Lentulus  as  we  walked  along  the  Mall, 
while  he  delivered  these  observations,  understood  by  himself 
to  have  a  regenerative  bearing  on  human  society.  His  wrist¬ 
bands  and  black  gloves,  his  hat  and  nicely  clipped  hair,  his 
laudable  moderation  in  beard,  and  his  evident  discrimination 
in  choosing  his  tailor,  all  seemed  to  excuse  the  prevalent  esti¬ 
mate  of  him  as  a  man  untainted  with  heterodoxy,  and  likely 
to  be  so  unencumbered  with  opinions  that  he  would  always 
be  useful  as  an  assenting  and  admiring  listener.  Men  of 
science,  seeing  him  at  their  lectures,  doubtless  flattered  them¬ 
selves  that  he  came  to  learn  from  them;  the  philosophic 
ornaments  of  our  time,  expounding  some  of  their  luminous 
ideas  in  the  social  circle,  took  the  meditative  gaze  of  Lentulus 
for  one  of  surprise,  not  unmixed  with  a  just  reverence  at 
such  close  reasoning  toward  so  novel  a  conclusion ;  and  those 
who  are  called  men  of  the  world  considered  him  a  good 
fellow,  who  might  be  asked  to  vote  for  a  friend  of  their  own, 
and  would  have  no  troublesome  notion  to  make  him  unac¬ 
commodating.  You  perceive  how  very  much  they  were  aU 
mistaken,  except  in  qualifying  him  as  a  good  fellow. 


A  HAN  SURPRISED  AT  HIS  ORIGINALITY.  299 


This  Lentulus  certainly  was,  in  the  sense  of  being  free 
from  envy,  hatred,  and  malice ;  and  such  freedom  was  all  the 
more  remarkable  an  indication  of  native  benignity,  because  of 
his  gaseous,  illimitably  expansive  conceit.  Yes,  conceit;  for 
that  his  enormous  and  contentedly  ignorant  confidence  in  his 
own  rambling  thoughts  was  usually  clad  in  a  decent  silence, 
is  no  reason  why  it  should  be  less  strictly  called  by  the  name 
directly  implying  a  complacent  self-estimate  unwarranted  by 
performance.  Nay,  the  total  privacy  in  which  he  enjoyed 
his  consciousness  of  inspiration  was  the  very  condition  of  its 
undisturbed,  placid  nourishment  and  gigantic  growth.  Your 
audibly  arrogant  man  exposes  himself  to  tests ;  in  attempting 
to  make  an  impression  on  others,  he  may  possibly  (not  always) 
be  made  to  feel  his  own  lack  of  definiteness;  and  the  demand 
for  definiteness  is  to  all  of  us  a  needful  check  on  vague  de¬ 
preciation  of  what  others  do,  and  vague  ecstatic  trust  in  our 
own  superior  ability.  But  Lentulus  was  at  once  so  unrecep- 
tive,  and  so  little  gifted  with  the  power  of  displaying  his 
miscellaneous  deficiency  of  information,  that  there  was  really 
nothing  to  hinder  his  astonishment  at  the  spontaneous  crop 
of  ideas  which  his  mind  secretly  yielded.  If  it  occurred  to 
him  that  there  were  more  meanings  than  one  for  the  word 
“motive,”  since  it  sometimes  metmt  the  end  aimed  at,  and 
sometimes  the  feeling  that  prompted  the  aiming,  and  that  the 
word  “  cause  ”  was  also  of  changeable  import,  he  was  naturally 
struck  with  the  truth  of  his  own  perception,  and  was  con¬ 
vinced  that  if  this  vein  were  well  followed  out  much  might 
be  made  of  it.  Men  were  evidently  in  the  wrong  about  cause 
and  effect ;  else  why  was  society  in  the  confused  state  we  be¬ 
hold  ?  And  as  to  motive,  Lentulus  felt  that  when  he  came 
to  write  down  his  views  he  should  look  deeply  into  this  kind 
of  subject,  and  show  up  thereby  the  anomalies  of  our  social 
institutions ;  meanwhile  the  various  aspects  of  “  motive  ”  and 
“cause  ”  flitted  about  among  the  motley  crowd  of  ideas  which 
he  regarded  as  original,  and  pregnant  with  reformative  effi¬ 
cacy.  For  his  unaffected  good-will  made  him  regard  all  his 
insight  as  only  valuable  because  it  tended  toward  reform. 


BOO  ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


* 

The  respectable  man  had  got  into  his  illusory  maze  of  dis¬ 
coveries,  by  letting  go  that  clew  of  conformity  in  his  thinking 
which  he  had  kept  fast  hold  of  in  his  tailoring  and  manners. 
He  regarded  heterodoxy  as  a  power  in  itself,  and  took  his 
inacquaintance  with  doctrines  for  a  creative  dissidence.  But 
his  epitaph  needs  not  to  be  a  melancholy  one.  His  benevo¬ 
lent  disposition  was  more  effective  for  good,  than  his  silent 
presumption  for  harm.  He  might  have  been  mischievous 
but  for  the  lack  of  words ;  instead  of  being  astonished  at  his 
inspirations  in  private,  he  might  have  clad  his  addled  origi¬ 
nalities,  disjointed  commonplaces,  blind  denials,  and  balloon¬ 
like  conclusions  in  that  mighty  sort  of  language  which  would 
have  made  a  new  Koran  for  a  knot  of  followers.  I  mean  no 
disrespect  to  the  ancient  Koran,  but  one  would  not  desire  the 
roc  to  lay  more  eggs,  and  give  us  a  whole  wing-flapping  brood 
to  soar  and  make  twilight. 

Peace  be  with  Lentulus,  for  he  has  left  us  in  peace. 
Blessed  is  the  man  who,  having  nothing  to  say,  abstains  from 
giving  us  wordy  evidence  of  the  fact,  —  from  calling  on  us  to 
look  through  a  heap  of  millet-seed,  in  order  to  be  sure  that 
there  is  no  pearl  in  it. 


A  TOO  DEFERENTIAL  MAN. 


A  LITTLE  unpremeditated  insincerity  must  be  indulged 
under  the  stress  of  social  intercourse.  The  talk  even 
of  an  honest  man  must  often  represent  merely  his  wish  to 
be  inoffensive  or  agreeable,  rather  than  his  genuine  opinion 
or  feeling  on  the  matter  in  hand.  His  thought,  if  uttered, 
might  be  wounding ;  or  he  has  not  the  ability  to  utter  it  with 
exactness,  and  snatches  at  a  loose  paraphrase  ;  or  he  has  really 
no  genuine  thought  on  the  question,  and  is  driven  to  fill  up 
the  vacancy  by  borrowing  the  remarks  in  vogue.  These  are 
the  winds  and  currents  we  have  all  to  steer  among,  and  they 
are  often  too  strong  for  our  truthfulness  or  our  wit.  Let  us 
not  bear  too  hardly  on  each  other  for  this  common  incidental 
frailty,  or  think  that  we  rise  superior  to  it  by  dropping  all 
considerateness  and  deference. 

But  there  are  studious,  deliberate  forms  of  insincerity 
which  it  is  fair  to  be  impatient  with  —  Hinze’s,  for  example. 
From  his  name  you  might  suppose  him  to  be  German ;  in 
fact,  his  family  is  Alsatian,  but  has  been  settled  in  England 
for  more  than  one  generation.  He  is  the  superlatively  defer¬ 
ential  man,  and  walks  about  with  murmured  wonder  at  the 
wisdom  and  discernment  of  everybody  who  talks  to  him.  He 
cultivates  the  low-toned  tete-a-tete ,  keeping  his  hat  carefully 
in  his  hand,  often  stroking  it,  while  he  smiles  with  downcast 
eyes,  as  if  to  relieve  his  feelings  under  the  pressure  of  the 
remarkable  conversation  which  it  is  his  honor  to  enjoy  at  the 
present  moment.  I  confess  to  some  rage  on  hearing  him 
yesterday  talking  to  Felicia,  who  is  certainly  a  clever  woman, 
and  without  any  unusual  desire  to  show  her  cleverness,  occa* 


302 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


sionally  says  something  of  her  own,  or  makes  an  allusion  which 
is  not  quite  common.  Still,  it  must  happen  to  her,  as  to  every 
one  else,  to  speak  of  many  subjects  on  which  the  best  things 
were  said  long  ago ;  and  in  conversation  with  a  person  who 
has  been  newly  introduced,  those  well-worn  themes  naturally 
recur  as  a  further  development  of  salutations  and  preliminary 
media  of  understanding,  such  as  pipes,  chocolate,  or  mastic- 
chewing,  which  serve  to  confirm  the  impression  that  our  new 
acquaintance  is  on  a  civilized  footing,  and  has  enough  regard 
for  formulas  to  save  us  from  shocking  outbursts  of  individu¬ 
alism,  to  which  we  are  always  exposed  with  the  tamest  bear 
or  baboon.  Considered  purely  as  a  matter  of  information,  it 
cannot  any  longer  be  important  for  us  to  learn  that  a  British 
subject,  included  in  the  last  census,  holds  Shakspeare  to  be 
supreme  in  the  presentation  of  character ;  still,  it  is  as  admis¬ 
sible  for  any  one  to  make  this  statement  about  himself  as  to 
rub  his  hands  and  tell  you  that  the  air  is  brisk,  if  only  he 
will  let  it  fall  as  a  matter  of  course,  with  a  parenthetic  light¬ 
ness,  and  not  announce  his  adhesion  to  a  commonplace  with 
an  emphatic  insistence,  as  if  it  were  a  proof  of  singular  in¬ 
sight.  We  mortals  should  chiefly  like  to  talk  to  each  other 
out  of  good-will  and  fellowship,  not  for  the  sake  of  hearing 
revelations  or  being  stimulated  by  witticisms;  and  I  have 
usually  found  that  it  is  the  rather  dull  person  who  appears 
to  be  disgusted  with  his  contemporaries  because  they  are  not 
always  strikingly  original,  and  to  satisfy  whom  the  party  at 
a  country-house  should  have  included  the  prophet  Isaiah, 
Plato,  Francis  Bacon,  and  Voltaire.  It  is  always  your  heaviest 
bore  who  is  astonished  at  the  tameness  of  modern  celebrities ; 
naturally,  for  a  little  of  his  company  has  reduced  them  to  a 
state  of  flaccid  fatigue.  It  is  right  and  meet  that  there 
should  be  an  abundant  utterance  of  good  sound  commonplaces. 
Part  of  an  agreeable  talker’s  charm  is  that  he  lets  them  fall 
continually  with  no  more  than  their  due  emphasis.  Giving 
a  pleasant  voice  to  what  we  are  all  well  assured  of,  makes  a 
sort  of  wholesome  air  for  more  special  and  dubious  remark 
to  move  in. 


A  TOO  DEFERENTIAL  MAN. 


303 


Hence  it  seemed  to  me  far  from  unbecoming  in  Felicia  that 
in  her  first  dialogue  with  Hinze,  previously  quite  a  stranger 
to  her,  her  observations  were  those  of  an  ordinarily  refined 
and  well-educated  woman  on  standard  subjects,  and  might 
have  been  printed  in  a  manual  of  polite  topics  and  creditable 
opinions.  She  had  no  desire  to  astonish  a  man  of  whom 
she  had  heard  nothing  particular.  It  was  all  the  more  exas¬ 
perating  to  see  and  hear  Hinze’s  reception  of  her  well-bred 
conformities.  Felicia’s  acquaintances  knew  her  as  the  suit¬ 
able  wife  of  a  distinguished  man,  a  sensible,  vivacious,  kindly 
disposed  woman,  helping  her  husband  with  graceful  apologies 
written  and  spoken,  and  making  her  receptions  agreeable  to 
all  comers.  But  you  would  have  imagined  that  Hinze  had 
been  prepared  by  general  report  to  regard  this  introduction 
to  her  as  an  opportunity  comparable  to  an  audience  of  the 
Delphic  Sibyl.  When  she  had  delivered  herself  on  the 
changes  in  Italian  travel,  on  the  difficulty  of  reading  Ariosto 
in  these  busy  times,  on  the  want  of  equilibrium  in  French 
political  affairs,  and  on  the  pre-eminence  of  German  music, 
he  would  know  what  to  think.  Felicia  was  evidently  embar¬ 
rassed  by  his  reverent  wonder,  and,  in  dread  lest  she  should 
seem  to  be  playing  the  oracle,  became  somewhat  confused, 
stumbling  on  her  answers  rather  than  choosing  them.  But 
this  made  no  difference  to  Hinze’s  rapt  attention  and  sub¬ 
dued  eagerness  of  inquiry.  He  continued  to  put  large  ques¬ 
tions,  bending  his  head  slightly,  that  his  eyes  might  be  a 
little  lifted  in  awaiting  her  reply. 

“  What,  may  I  ask,  is  your  opinion  as  to  the  state  of  Art 
in  England  ?  ” 

“  Oh,”  said  Felicia,  with  a  light  deprecatory  laugh,  “  I 
think  it  suffers  from  two  diseases  —  bad  taste  in  the  patrons, 
and  want  of  inspiration  in  the  artists.” 

“That  is  true  indeed,”  said  Hinze,  in  an  undertone  of 
deep  conviction.  “  You  have  put  your  finger  with  strict  ac¬ 
curacy  on  the  causes  of  decline.  To  a  cultivated  taste  like 
yours  this  must  be  particularly  painful.” 

“  I  did  not  say  there  was  actual  decline,”  said  Felicia, 


304 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


with  a  touch  of  brusquerie.  “  I  don’t  set  myself  up  as  the 
great  personage  whom  nothing  can  please.” 

“  That  would  be  too  severe  a  misfortune  for  others,”  says 
my  complimentary  ape.  “You  approve,  perhaps,  of  Rose¬ 
mary’s  ‘Babes  in  the  Wood/  as  something  fresh  and  naive 
in  sculpture  ?  ” 

“  I  think  it  enchanting.” 

“  Does  he  know  that  ?  Or  will  you  permit  me  to  tell 
him  ?  ” 

“  Heaven  forbid  !  It  would  be  an  impertinence  in  me  to 
praise  a  work  of  his,  to  pronounce  on  its  quality ;  and  that 
I  happen  to  like  it  can  be  of  no  consequence  to  him.” 

Here  was  an  occasion  for  Hinze  to  smile  down  on  his  hat 
and  stroke  it — -Felicia’s  ignorance  that  her  praise  was  ines¬ 
timable  being  peculiarly  noteworthy  to  an  observer  of  man¬ 
kind.  Presently  he  was  quite  sure  that  her  favorite  author 
was  Shakspeare,  and  wished  to  know  what  she  thought  of 
Hamlet’s  madness.  When  she  had  quoted  Wilhelm  Meister 
on  this  point,  and  had  afterward  testified  that  “  Lear  ”  was 
beyond  adequate  presentation,  that  “Julius  Caesar”  was  an 
effective  acting  play,  and  that  a  poet  may  know  a  good  deal 
about  human  nature  while  knowing  little  of  geography,  Hinze 
appeared  so  impressed  with  the  plenitude  of  these  revela¬ 
tions  that  he  recapitulated  them,  weaving  them  together  with 
threads  of  compliment :  “  As  you  very  justly  observed ;  ” 
and  “  It  is  most  true,  as  you  say ;  ”  and  “  It  were  well  if 
others  noted  what  you  have  remarked.” 

Some  listeners,  incautious  in  their  epithets,  would  have 
called  Hinze  an  “  ass.”  For  my  part,  I  would  never  insult 
that  intelligent  and  unpretending  animal,  who  no  doubt  brays 
with  perfect  simplicity  and  substantial  meaning  to  those  ac¬ 
quainted  with  his  idiom,  and  if  he  feigns  more  submission 
than  he  feels,  has  weighty  reasons  for  doing  so;  I  would 
never,  I  say,  insult  that  historic  and  ill-appreciated  animal, 
the  ass,  by  giving  his  name  to  a  man  whose  continuous  pre¬ 
tence  is  so  shallow  in  its  motive,  so  unexcused  by  any  sharp 
appetite,  as  this  of  Hinxe’s. 


A  TOO  DEFERENTIAL  MAN. 


305 


But  perhaps  you  would  say  that  his  adulatory  manner  was 
originally  adopted  under  strong  promptings  of  self-interest, 
and  that  his  absurdly  overacted  deference  to  persons  from 
whom  he  expects  no  patronage  is  the  unreflecting  persistence 
of  habit — just  as  those  who  live  with  the  deaf  will  shout  to 
everybody  else. 

And  you  might  indeed  imagine  that  in  talking  to  Tulpian, 
who  has  considerable  interest  at  his  disposal,  Hinze  had  a 
desired  appointment  in  his  mind.  Tulpian  is  appealed  to  on 
innumerable  subjects,  and  if  he  is  unwilling  to  express  him¬ 
self  on  any  one  of  them,  says  so  with  instructive  copiousness  ; 
he  is  much  listened  to,  and  his  utterances  are  registered  and 
reported  with  more  or  less  exactitude.  But  I  think  he  has 
no  other  listener  who  comports  himself  as  Hinze  does  —  who, 
figuratively  speaking,  carries  about  a  small  spoon,  ready  to 
pick  up  any  dusty  crumb  of  opinion  that  the  eloquent  man 
may  have  let  drop.  Tulpian,  with  reverence  be  it  said,  has 
some  rather  absurd  notions,  such  as  a  mind  of  large  discourse 
often  finds  room  for.  They  slip  about  among  his  higher  con¬ 
ceptions  and  multitudinous  acquirements,  like  disreputable 
characters  at  a  national  celebration  in  some  vast  cathedral, 
where  to  the  ardent  soul  all  is  glorified  by  rainbow-light  and 
grand  associations  ;  any  vulgar  detective  knows  them  for 
what  they  are.  But  Hinze  is  especially  fervid  in  his  desire 
to  hear  Tulpian  dilate  on  his  crotchets,  and  is  rather  trouble¬ 
some  to  bystanders  in  asking  them  whether  they  have  read 
the  variouo  fugitive  writings  in  which  these  crotchets  have 
been  published.  If  an  expert  is  explaining  some  matter  on 
which  you  desire  to  know  the  evidence,  Hinze  teases  you 
with  Tulpian’ s  guesses,  and  asks  the  expert  what  he  thinks 
of  them. 

In  general,  Hinze  delights  in  the  citation  of  opinions,  and 
would  hardly  remark  that  the  sun  shone,  without  an  air  of 
respectful  appeal  or  fervid  adhesion.  The  “  Iliad, ”  one  sees, 
would  impress  him  little,  if  it  were  not  for  what  Mr.  Fugle¬ 
man  has  lately  said  about  it ;  and  if  you  mention  an  image  or 
sentiment  in  Chaucer,  he  seems  not  to  heed  the  bearing  cf 

20 


VOL.  IX. 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


3oe 

your  reference,  but  immediately  tells  you  that  Mr.  Hautboy, 
too,  regards  Chaucer  as  a  poet  of  the  hrst  order,  and  he  is 
delighted  to  find  that  two  such  judges,  as  you  and  Hautboy, 
are  at  one. 

What  is  the  reason  of  all  this  subdued  ecstasy,  moving 
about,  hat  in  hand,  with  well-dressed  hair,  and  attitudes  of 
unimpeachable  correctness  ?  Some  persons,  conscious  of  sa¬ 
gacity,  decide  at  once  that  Hinze  knows  what  he  is  about  in 
flattering  Tulpian,  and  has  a  carefully  appraised  end  to  serve, 
though  they  may  not  see  it.  They  are  misled  by  the  com¬ 
mon  mistake  of  supposing  that  men’s  behavior,  whether  ha¬ 
bitual  or  occasional,  is  chiefly  determined  by  a  distinctly 
conceived  motive,  a  definite  object  to  be  gained  or  a  definite 
evil  to  be  avoided.  The  truth  is  that,  the  primitive  wants  of 
nature  once  tolerably  satisfied,  the  majority  of  mankind,  even 
in  a  civilized  life  full  of  solicitations,  are  with  difficulty 
aroused  to  the  distinct  conception  of  an  object  toward  which 
they  will  direct  their  actions  with  careful  adaptation  ;  and  it 
is  yet  rarer  to  find  one  who  can  persist  in  the  systematic  pur¬ 
suit  of  such  an  end.  Few  lives  are  shaped,  few  characters 
formed,  by  the  contemplation  of  definite  consequences  seen 
from  a  distance,  and  made  the  goal  of  continuous  effort  or  the 
beacon  of  a  constantly  avoided  danger.  Such  control  by  fore¬ 
sight,  such  vivid  picturing  and  practical  logic,  are  the  dis¬ 
tinction  of  exceptionally  strong  natures  ;  but  society  is  chiefly 
made  up  of  human  beings  whose  daily  acts  are  all  performed 
either  in  unreflecting  obedience  to  custom  and  routine,  or 
from  immediate  promptings  of  thought  or  feeling  to  execute 
an  immediate  purpose.  They  pay  their  poor-rates,  give  their 
vote  in  affairs  political  or  parochial,  wear  a  certain  amount 
of  starch,  hinder  boys  from  tormenting  the  helpless,  and 
spend  money  on  tedious  observances  called  pleasures,  with¬ 
out  mentally  adjusting  these  practices  to  their  own  well- 
understood  interest,  or  to  the  general,  ultimate  welfare  of 
the  human  race ;  and  when  they  fall  into  ungraceful  compli¬ 
ment,  excessive  smiling,  or  other  luckless  efforts  of  com¬ 
plaisant  behavior,  these  are  but  the  tricks  or  habits  gradually 


A  TOO  DEFERENTIAL  MAN. 


307 


formed  under  the  successive  promptings  of  a  wish  to  be 
agreeable,  stimulated  day  by  day  without  any  widening  re¬ 
sources  for  gratifying  the  wish.  It  does  not  in  the  least 
follow  that  they  are  seeking  by  studied  hypocrisy  to  get 
something  for  themselves.  And  so  with  Hinze’s  deferential 
bearing,  complimentary  parentheses,  and  worshipful  tones, 
which  seem  to  some  like  the  overacting  of  a  part  in  a  comedy. 
He  expects  no  appointment  or  other  appreciable  gain  through 
Tulpian’s  favor ;  he  has  no  doubleness  toward  Felicia ;  there 
is  no  sneering  or  backbiting  obverse  to  his  ecstatic  admiration. 
He  is  very  well  off  in  the  world,  and  cherishes  no  unsatisfied 
ambition  that  could  feed  design  and  direct  flattery.  As  you 
perceive,  he  has  had  the  education  and  other  advantages  of  a 
gentleman,  without  being  conscious  of  marked  result,  such  as 
a  decided  preference  for  any  particular  ideas  or  functions  ; 
his  mind  is  furnished  as  hotels  are,  with  everything  for  oc¬ 
casional  and  transient  use.  But  one  cannot  be  an  English¬ 
man  and  gentleman  in  general ;  it  is  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  one  must  have  an  individuality,  though  it  may  be  of  an 
often-repeated  type.  As  Hinze  in  growing  to  maturity  had 
grown  into  a  particular  form  and  expression  of  person,  so  he 
necessarily  gathered  a  manner  and  frame  of  speech  which 
made  him  additionally  recognizable.  His  nature  is  not  tuned 
to  the  pitch  of  a  genuine  direct  admiration,  only  to  an  atti¬ 
tudinizing  deference  which  does  not  fatigue  itself  with  the 
formation  of  real  judgments.  All  human  achievement  must 
be  wrought  down  to  this  spoon-meat,  this  mixture  of  other 
persons’  washy  opinions  and  his  own  flux  of  reverence  for 
what  is  third-hand,  before  Hinze  can  find  a  relish  for  it. 

He  has  no  more  leading  characteristic  than  the  desire  to 
stand  well  with  those  who  are  justly  distinguished ;  he  has 
no  base  admirations ;  and  you  may  know  by  his  entire  presen¬ 
tation  of  himself,  from  the  management  of  his  hat  to  the 
angle  at  which  he  keeps  his  right  foot,  that  he  aspires  to  cor¬ 
rectness.  Desiring  to  behave  becomingly,  and  also  to  make 
a  figure  in  dialogue,  he  is  only  like  the  bad  artist,  whose  pic¬ 
ture  is  a  failure.  We  may  pity  these  ill-gifted  strivers,  but 


308 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


not  pretend  that  their  works  are  pleasant  to  behold.  A  man 
is  bound  to  know  something  of  his  own  weight  and  muscular 
dexterity,  and  the  puny  athlete  is  called  foolish  before  he  is 
seen  to  be  thrown.  Hinze  has  not  the  stuff  in  him  to  be  at 
once  agreeably  conversational  and  sincere,  and  he  has  got 
himself  up  to  be  at  all  events  agreeably  conversational.  Not¬ 
withstanding  this  deliberateness  of  intention  in  Ins  talk,  he  is 
unconscious  of  falsity ;  for  he  has  not  enough  of  deep  and 
lasting  impression  to  find  a  contrast  or  diversity  between  his 
words  and  his  thoughts.  He  is  not  fairly  to  be  called  a 
hypocrite ;  but  I  have  already  confessed  to  the  more  exaspera¬ 
tion  at  his  make-believe  reverence,  because  it  has  no  deep 
hunger  to  excuse  it. 


ONLY  TEMPER. 


HAT  is  temper  ?  Its  primary  meaning,  the  proportion 


and  mode  in  which  qualities  are  mingled,  is  much 


neglected  in  popular  speech,  yet  even  here  the  word  often 
carries  a  reference  to  an  habitual  state  or  general  tendency  of 
the  organism,  in  distinction  from  what  are  held  to  be  spe¬ 
cific  virtues  and  vices.  As  people  confess  to  bad  memory 
without  expecting  to  sink  in  mental  reputation,  so  we  hear  a 
man  declared  to  have  a  bad  temper,  and  yet  glorified  as  the 
possessor  of  every  high  quality.  When  he  errs,  or  in  any 
way  commits  himself,  his  temper  is  accused,  not  his  charac¬ 
ter  ;  and  it  is  understood  that,  but  for  a  brutal,  bearish  mood, 
he  is  kindness  itself.  If  he  kicks  small  animals,  swears  vio¬ 
lently  at  a  servant  who  mistakes  orders,  or  is  grossly  rude  to 
his  wife,  it  is  remarked  apologetically  that  these  things  mean 
nothing  —  they  are  all  temper. 

Certainly  there  is  a  limit  to  this  form  of  apology,  and  the 
forgery  of  a  bill,  or  the  ordering  of  goods  without  any  pros¬ 
pect  of  paying  for  them,  has  never  been  set  down  to  an  un¬ 
fortunate  habit  of  sulkiness  or  of  irascibility.  But,  on  the 
whole,  there  is  a  peculiar  exercise  of  indulgence  toward  the 
manifestations  of  bad  temper,  which  tends  to  encourage  them , 
so  that  we  are  in  danger  of  having  among  us  a  number  of 
virtuous  persons  who  conduct  themselves  detestably,  just  as 
we  have  hysterical  patients  who,  with  sound  organs,  are 
apparently  laboring  under  many  sorts  of  organic  disease. 
Let  it  be  admitted,  however,  that  a  man  may  be  “a  good 
fellow  ”  and  yet  have  a  bad  temper,  —  so  bad  that  we  recog¬ 
nize  his  merits  with  reluctance,  and  are  inclined  to  resent 


310 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


his  occasionally  amiable  behavior  as  an  unfair  demand  on 
our  admiration. 

Touchwood  is  that  kind  of  good  fellow.  He  is  by  turns 
insolent,  quarrelsome,  repulsively  haughty  to  innocent  peo¬ 
ple  who  approach  him  with  respect,  neglectful  of  his  friends, 
angry  in  face  of  legitimate  demands,  procrastinating  in  th< 
fulfilment  of  such  demands,  prompted  to  rude  words  anC 
harsh  looks  by  a  moody  disgust,  with  his  fellow-men  in  gen¬ 
eral —  and  yet,  as  everybody  will  assure  you,  the  soul  of 
honor,  a  steadfast  friend,  a  defender  of  the  oppressed,  an 
affectionate-hearted  creature.  Pity  that,  after  a  certain  expe¬ 
rience  of  his  moods,  liis  intimacy  becomes  insupportable  !  A 
man  who  uses  his  balmorals  to  tread  on  your  toes  with  much 
frequency,  and  an  unmistakable  emphasis,  may  prove  a  fast 
friend  in  adversity ;  but  meanwhile  your  adversity  has  not  ar¬ 
rived,  and  your  toes  are  tender.  The  daily  sneer  or  growl  at 
your  remarks  is  not  to  be  made  amends  for  by  a  possible 
eulogy,  or  defence  of  your  understanding  against  depreda¬ 
tors  who  may  not  present  themselves,  and  on  an  occasion 
which  may  never  arise.  I  cannot  submit  to  a  chronic  state 
of  blue  and  green  bruise  as  a  form  of  insurance  against  an 
accident. 

Touchwood’s  bad  temper  is  of  the  contradicting,  pugna¬ 
cious  sort.  He  is  the  honorable  gentleman  in  opposition, 
whatever  proposal  or  proposition  may  be  broached  ;  and  when 
others  join  him,  he  secretly  damns  their  superfluous  agree¬ 
ment,  quickly  discovering  that  his  way  of  stating  the  case  is 
not  exactly  theirs.  An  invitation,  or  any  sign  of  expectation, 
throws  him  into  an  attitude  of  refusal.  Ask  his  concurrence 
in  a  benevolent  measure ;  he  will  not  decline  to  give  it,  be  ¬ 
cause  he  has  a  real  sympathy  with  good  aims,  but  he  com¬ 
plies  resentfully ;  though  where  he  is  let  alone,  he  will  do 
much  more  than  any  one  would  have  thought  of  asking  for. 
No  man  would  shrink  with  greater  sensitiveness  from  the  im¬ 
putation  of  not  paying  his  debts ;  yet  when  a  bill  is  sent  in 
with  any  promptitude,  he  is  inclined  to  make  the  tradesman 
wait  for  the  money  he  is  in  such  a  hurry  to  get.  One  sees 


ONLY  TEMPER. 


311 


that  this  antagonistic  temper  must  be  much  relieved  by  find¬ 
ing  a  particular  object,  and  that  its  worst  moments  must  be 
those  where  the  mood  is  that  of  vague  resistance,  there  being 
nothing  specific  to  oppose.  Touchwood  is  never  so  little 
engaging  as  when  he  conies  down  to  breakfast  with  a  cloud 
on  his  brow,  after  parting  from  you  the  night  before  with  an 
affectionate  effusiveness,  at  the  end  of  a  confidential  conver¬ 
sation,  which  has  assured  you  of  mutual  understanding.  Im¬ 
possible  that  you  can  have  committed  any  offence  !  If  mice 
have  disturbed  him,  that  is  not  your  fault ;  but,  nevertheless, 
your  cheerful  greeting  had  better  not  convey  any  reference  to 
the  weather ;  else  it  will  be  met  by  a  sneer  which,  taking  you 
unawares,  may  give  you  a  crushing  sense  that  you  make  a 
poor  figure  with  your  cheerfulness,  which  was  not  asked  for. 
Some  daring  person  perhaps  introduces  another  topic,  and 
uses  the  delicate  flattery  of  appealing  to  Touchwood  for  his 
opinion,  the  topic  being  included  in  his  favorite  studies.  An 
indistinct  muttering,  with  a  look  at  the  carving-knife,  in  reply, 
teaches  that  daring  person  how  ill  he  has  chosen  a  market 
for  his  deference.  If  Touchwood’s  behavior  affects  you  very 
closely,  you  had  better  break  your  leg  in  the  course  of  the 
day  :  his  bad  temper  will  then  vanish  at  once  ;  he  will  take 
a  painful  journey  on  your  behalf ;  he  will  sit  up  with  you 
night  after  night ;  he  will  do  all  the  work  of  your  department, 
so  as  to  save  you  from  any  loss  in  consequence  of  your  acci¬ 
dent  ;  he  will  be  even  uniformly  tender  to  you  till  you  are 
well  on  your  legs  again,  wrhen  he  will  some  fine  morning  in¬ 
sult  you  without  provocation,  and  make  you  wish  that  his 
generous  goodness  to  you  had  not  closed  your  lips  against 
retort. 

It  is  not  always  necessary  that  a  friend  should  break  his 
leg  for  Touchwood  to  feel  compunction,  and  endeavor  to  make 
amends  for  his  bearishness  or  insolence.  He  becomes  spon¬ 
taneously  conscious  that  he  has  misbehaved,  and  he  is  not 
only  ashamed  of  himself,  but  has  the  better  prompting  to  try 
and  heal  any  wound  he  has  inflicted.  Unhappily,  the  habit 
of  being  offensive  “  without  meaning  it  ”  leads  usually  to  a 


312 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


way  of  making  amends  which  the  injured  person  cannot  but 
regard  as  a  being  amiable  without  meaning  it.  The  kind¬ 
nesses,  the  complimentary  indications  or  assurances,  are  apt 
to  appear  in  the  light  of  a  penance  adjusted  to  the  foregoing 
lapses,  and,  by  the  very  contrast  they  offer,  call  up  a  keener 
memory  of  the  wrong  they  atone  for.  They  are  not  a  spon¬ 
taneous  prompting  of  good-will,  but  an  elaborate  compensa¬ 
tion.  And,  in  fact,  Dion’s  atoning  friendliness  has  a  ring  of 
artificiality.  Because  he  formerly  disguised  his  good  feeling 
toward  you,  he  now  expresses  more  than  he  quite  feels.  It 
is  in  vain.  Having  made  you  extremely  uncomfortable  last 
week,  he  has  absolutely  diminished  his  power  of  making  you 
happy  to-day.  He  struggles  against  the  result  by  excessive 
effort ;  but  he  has  taught  you  to  observe  his  fitfulness,  rather 
than  to  be  warmed  by  his  episodic  show  of  regard. 

I  suspect  that  many  persons  who  have  an  uncertain,  in¬ 
calculable  temper,  flatter  themselves  that  it  enhances  their 
fascination ;  but  perhaps  they  are  under  the  prior  mistake  of 
exaggerating  the  charm  which  they  suppose  to  be  thus 
strengthened ;  in  any  case,  they  will  do  well  not  to  trust  in 
the  attractions  of  caprice  and  moodiness  for  a  long  continu¬ 
ance  or  for  close  intercourse.  A  pretty  woman  may  fan  the 
flame  of  distant  adorers  by  harassing  them ;  but  if  she  lets  one 
of  them  make  her  his  wife,  the  point  of  view  from  which  he 
will  look  at  her  poutings  and  tossings,  and  mysterious  ina¬ 
bility  to  be  pleased,  will  be  seriously  altered.  And  if  slavery 
to  a  pretty  woman,  which  seems  among  the  least  conditional 
forms  of  abject  service,  will  not  bear  too  great  a  strain  from 
her  bad  temper,  even  though  her  beauty  remain  the  same,  it 
is  clear  that  a  man  whose  claims  lie  in  his  high  character,  or 
high  performances,  had  need  impress  us  very  constantly  with 
his  peculiar  value  and  indispensableness,  if  he  is  to  test  our 
patience  by  an  uncertainty  of  temper  which  leaves  us  abso¬ 
lutely  without  grounds  for  guessing  how  he  will  receive  our 
persons  or  humbly  advanced  opinions,  or  what  line  he  will 
take  on  any  but  the  most  momentous  occasions. 

For  it  is  among  the  repulsive  effects  of  this  bad  temper, 


ONLY  TEMPER. 


313 


which  is  supposed  to  be  compatible  with  shining  virtues,  that 
it  is  apt  to  determine  a  man’s  sudden  adhesion  to  an  opinion, 
whether  on  a  personal  or  impersonal  matter,  without  leaving 
him  time  to  consider  his  grounds.  The  adhesion  is  sudden 
and  momentary,  but  it  either  forms  a  precedent  for  his  line 
of  thought  and  action,  or  it  is  presently  seen  to  have  been 
inconsistent  with  his  true  mind.  This  determination  of  par¬ 
tisanship  by  temper  has  its  worst  effects  in  the  career  of  the 
public  man,  who  is  always  in  danger  of  getting  so  enthralled 
by  his  own  words  that  he  looks  into  facts  and  questions,  not 
to  get  rectifying  knowledge,  but  to  get  evidence  that  will 
justify  his  actual  attitude,  which  was  assumed  under  an  im¬ 
pulse  dependent  on  something  else  than  knowledge.  There 
has  been  plenty  of  insistence  on  the  evil  of  swearing  by  the 
words  of  a  master,  and  having  the  judgment  uniformly  con¬ 
trolled  by  a  “  He  said  it ;  ”  but  a  much  worse  woe  to  befall  a 
man  is  to  have  every  judgment  controlled  by  an  “ I  said  it” 
—  to  make  a  divinity  of  his  own  short-sightedness  or  passion- 
led  aberration,  and  explain  the  world  in  its  honor.  There  is 
hardly  a  more  pitiable  degradation  than  this,  for  a  man  of  high 
gifts.  Hence  I  cannot  join  with  those  who  wish  that  Touch- 
wood,  being  young  enough  to  enter  on  public  life,  should  get 
elected  for  Parliament,  and  use  his  excellent  abilities  to  serve 
his  country  in  that  conspicuous  manner.  For  hitherto,  in  the 
less  momentous  incidents  of  private  life,  his  capricious  temper 
has  only  produced  the  minor  evil  of  inconsistency,  and  he  is 
even  greatly  at  ease  in  contradicting  himself,  provided  he  can 
contradict  you,  and  disappoint  any  smiling  expectation  you 
may  have  shown  that  the  impressions  you  are  uttering  are 
likely  to  meet  with  his  sympathy,  considering  that  the  day 
before  he  himself  gave  you  the  example  which  your  mind  is 
following.  He  is  at  least  free  from  those  fetters  of  self-jus¬ 
tification  which  are  the  curse  of  parliamentary  speaking ;  and 
what  I  rather  desire  for  him  is  that  he  should  produce  the 
great  book  which  he  is  generally  pronounced  capable  of  writ¬ 
ing,  and  put  his  best  self  imperturbably  on  record  for  the  ad¬ 
vantage  of  society ;  because  I  should  then  have  steady  ground 


314 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


for  bearing  with  his  diurnal  incalculableness,  and  could  fix 
my  gratitude  as  by  strong  staple  to  that  unvarying  monu¬ 
mental  service.  Unhappily,  Touchwood’s  great  powers  have 
Deen  only  so  far  manifested  as  to  be  believed  in,  not  demon¬ 
strated.  Everybody  rates  them  highly,  and  thinks  that 
whatever  he  chose  to  do  would  be  done  in  a  firstrate  manner. 
Is  it  his  love  of  disappointing  complacent  expectancy,  which 
has  gone  so  far  as  to  keep  up  this  lamentable  negation, 
and  made  him  resolve  not  to  write  the  comprehensive  work 
which  he  would  have  written  if  nobody  had  expected  it 
of  him  ? 

One  can  see  that  if  Touchwood  were  to  become  a  public 
man,  and  take  to  frequent  speaking  on  platforms  or  from  his 
seat  in  the  House,  it  would  hardly  be  possible  for  him  to 
maintain  much  integrity  of  opinion,  or  to  avoid  courses  of 
partisanship  which  a  healthy  public  sentiment  would  stamp 
with  discredit.  Say  that  lie  were  endowed  with  the  purest 
honesty,  it  would  inevitably  be  dragged  captive  by  this  mys¬ 
terious,  Protean,  bad  temper.  There  would  be  the  fatal  pub¬ 
lic  necessity  of  justifying  oratorical  temper,  which  had  got 
on  its  legs  in  its  bitter  mood  and  made  insulting  imputations, 
or  of  keeping  up  some  decent  show  of  consistency  with  opin¬ 
ions  vented  out  of  temper’s  contradictoriness.  And  word? 
would  have  to  be  followed  up  by  acts  of  adhesion. 

Certainly,  if  a  bad-tempered  man  can  be  admirably  virtu¬ 
ous,  he  must  be  so  under  extreme  difficulties.  I  doubt  the 
possibility  that  a  high  order  of  character  can  coexist  with  a 
temper  like  Touchwood’s.  For  it  is  of  the  nature  of  such 
temper  to  interrupt  the  formation  of  healthy  mental  habits, 
which  depend  on  a  growing  harmony  between  perception, 
conviction,  and  impulse.  There  may  be  good  feelings,  good 
deeds,  —  for  a  human  nature  may  pack  endless  varieties  and 
blessed  inconsistencies  in  its  windings,  —  but  it  is  essential 
to  what  is  worthy  to  be  called  high  character,  that  it  may  be 
safely  calculated  on,  and  that  its  qualities  shall  have  taken 
the  form  of  principles  or  laws,  habitually,  if  not  perfectly, 
obeyed. 


ONLY  TEMPER. 


815 


If  a  man  frequently  passes  unjust  judgments,  takes  up 
false  attitudes,  intermits  liis  acts  of  kindness  with  rude  be¬ 
havior  or  cruel  words,  and  falls  into  the  consequent  vulgar 
error  of  supposing  that  he  can  make  amends  by  labored 
agreeableness,  I  cannot  consider  such  courses  any  the  less 
ugly  because  they  are  ascribed  to  “  temper.”  Especially  I 
object  to  the  assumption,  that  his  having  a  fundamentally 
good  disposition  is  either  an  apology  or  a  compensation  for 
his  bad  behavior.  If  his  temper  yesterday  made  him  lash 
the  horses,  upset  the  curricle,  and  cause  a  breakage  in  my 
rib,  I  feel  it  no  compensation  that  to-day  he  vows  he  will 
drive  me  anywhere,  in  the  gentlest  manner,  any  day,  as  long  as 
he  lives.  Yesterday  was  what  it  was,  —  my  rib  is  paining 
me;  it  is  not  a  main  object  of  my  life  to  be  driven  by 
Touchwood,  and  I  have  no  confidence  in  his  life-long  gentle¬ 
ness.  The  utmost  form  of  placability  I  am  capable  of  is  to 
try  and  remember  his  better  deeds  already  performed,  and, 
mindful  of  my  own  offence,  to  bear  him  no  malice.  But  I 
cannot  accept  his  amends. 

If  the  bad-tempered  man  wants  to  apologize,  he  had  need 
to  do  it  on  a  large  public  scale,  —  make  some  beneficent  dis¬ 
covery,  produce  some  stimulating  work  of  genius,  invent 
some  powerful  process,  —  prove  himself  such  a  good  to  con¬ 
temporary  multitudes  and  future  generations  as  to  make  the 
discomfort  he  causes  his  friends  and  acquaintances  a  vanish¬ 
ing  quality,  a  trifle  even  in  their  own  estimate. 


A  POLITICAL  MOLECULE. 


rT^HE  most  arrant  denier  must  admit  that  a  man  often  fun 
I  thers  larger  ends  than  he  is  conscious  of,  and  that 
while  he  is  transacting  his  particular  affairs  with  the  narrow 
pertinacity  of  a  respectable  ant,  he  subserves  an  economy 
larger  than  any  purpose  of  his  own.  Society  is  happily  not 
dependent  for  the  growth  of  fellowship  on  the  small  minority 
already  endowed  with  comprehensive  sympathy.  Any  mole¬ 
cule  of  the  body  politic,  working  toward  his  own  interest  in 
an  orderly  way,  gets  his  understanding  more  or  less  pene¬ 
trated  with  the  fact  that  his  interest  is  included  in  that  of  a 
large  number.  I  have  watched  several  political  molecules 
being  educated  in  this  way,  by  the  nature  of  things,  into  a 
faint  feeling  of  fraternity.  But  at  this  moment  I  am  think¬ 
ing  of  Spike,  an  elector  who  voted  on  the  side  of  Progress, 
though  he  was  not  inwardly  attached  to  it  under  that  name. 
For  abstractions  are  deities  having  many  specific  names,  local 
habitations,  and  forms  of  activity,  and  so  get  a  multitude  of 
devout  servants,  who  care  no  more  for  them  under  their  high¬ 
est  titles  than  the  celebrated  person  who,  putting  with  forci¬ 
ble  brevity  a  view  of  human  motives  now  much  insisted  on, 
asked  what  Posterity  had  done  for  him  that  he  should  care 
for  Posterity  ?  To  many  minds,  even  among  the  ancients 
(thought  by  some  to  have  been  invariably  poetical),  the  god¬ 
dess  of  wisdom  was  doubtless  worshipped  simply  as  the  pa¬ 
troness  of  spinning  and  weaving.  Now  spinning  and  weaving, 
from  a  manufacturing,  wholesale  point  of  view,  was  the  chief 
form  under  which  Spike  from  early  years  had  unconsciously 
been  a  devotee  of  Progress. 


A  POLITICAL  MOLECULE. 


317 


He  was  a  political  molecule  of  the  most  gentleman-like  ap¬ 
pearance,  not  less  than  six  feet  high,  and  showing  the  utmost 
nicety  in  the  care  of  his  person  and  equipment.  His  um¬ 
brella  was  especially  remarkable  for  its  neatness,  though 
perhaps  he  swung  it  unduly  in  walking.  His  complexion 
was  fresh,  his  eyes  small,  bright,  and  twinkling.  He  was 
seen  to  great  advantage  in  a  hat  and  great-coat  —  garments 
frequently  fatal  to  the  impressiveness  of  shorter  figures  ;  but 
when  he  was  uncovered  in  the  drawing-room,  it  was  impossi¬ 
ble  not  to  observe  that  his  head  shelved  off  too  rapidly  from 
the  eyebrows  toward  the  crown,  and  that  his  length  of  limb 
seemed  to  have  used  up  his  mind  so  as  to  cause  an  air  of 
abstraction  from  conversational  topics.  He  appeared,  indeed, 
to  be  preoccupied  with  a  sense  of  his  exquisite  cleanliness, 
clapped  his  hands  together  and  rubbed  them,  frequently 
straightened  his  back,  and  even  opened  his  mouth  and  closed 
it  again  with  a  slight  snap,  apparently  for  no  other  purpose 
than  the  confirmation  to  himself  of  his  own  powers  in  that 
line.  These  are  innocent  exercises,  but  they  are  not  such  as 
give  weight  to  a  man’s  personality.  Sometimes  Spike’s  mind, 
emerging  from  its  preoccupation,  burst  forth  in  a  remark  de¬ 
livered  with  smiling  zest  —  as,  that  he  did  like  to  see  gravel- 
walks  well  rolled,  or  that  a  lady  should  always  wear  the  best 
jewelry,  or  that  a  bride  was  a  most  interesting  object;  but 
finding  these  ideas  received  rather  coldly,  he  would  relapse 
into  abstraction,  draw  up  his  back,  wrinkle  his  brows  longi¬ 
tudinally,  and  seem  to  regard  society,  even  including  gravel- 
walks,  jewelry,  and  brides,  as  essentially  a  poor  affair.  Indeed, 
his  habit  of  mind  was  desponding,  and  he  took  melancholy 
views  as  to  the  possible  extent  of  human  pleasure  and  the 
value  of  existence ;  especially  after  he  had  made  his  fortune 
in  the  cotton  manufacture,  and  had  thus  attained  the  chief 
object  of  his  ambition  —  the  object  which  had  engaged  his 
talent  for  order  and  persevering  application  —  for  his  easy 
leisure  caused  him  much  ennui.  He  was  abstemious,  and 
had  none  of  those  temptations  to  sensual  excess  which  fill  up 
a  man’s  time,  first  with  indulgence,  and  then  with  the  process 


318 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


of  getting  well  from  its  effects.  He  had  not,  indeed,  ex¬ 
hausted  the  sources  of  knowledge,  but  here  again  his  notions 
of  human  pleasure  were  narrowed  by  his  want  of  appetite ; 
for,  though  he  seemed  rather  surprised  at  the  consideration 
that  Alfred  the  Great  was  a  Catholic,  or  that,  apart  from  the 
Ten  Commandments,  any  conception  of  moral  conduct  had  oc¬ 
curred  to  mankind,  he  was  not  stimulated  to  further  inquiries 
on  these  remote  matters.  Yet  he  aspired  to  what  he  regarded 
as  intellectual  society,  willingly  entertained  beneficed  clergy¬ 
men,  and  bought  the  books  he  heard  spoken  of,  arranging 
them  carefully  on  the  shelves  of  what  he  called  his  library, 
and  occasionally  sitting  alone  in  the  same  room  with  them. 
But  some  minds  seem  well  glaced  by  nature  against  the  ad¬ 
mission  of  knowledge,  and  Spike’s  was  one  of  them.  It  was 
not,  however,  entirely  so  with  regard  to  politics.  He  had  had 
a  strong  opinion  about  the  Reform  Bill,  and  saw  clearly  that 
the  large  trading-towns  ought  to  send  members.  Portraits 
of  the  Reform  heroes  hung  framed  and  glazed  in  his  library  ; 
he  prided  himself  on  being  a  Liberal.  In  this  last  particular, 
as  well  as  in  not  giving  benefactions,  and  not  making  loans 
without  interest,  he  showed  unquestionable  firmness.  On  the 
Repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws,  again,  he  was  thoroughly  convinced. 
His  mind  was  expansive  toward  foreign  markets,  and  his 
imagination  could  see  that  the  people  from  whom  we  took 
corn  might  be  able  to  take  the  cotton  goods  which  they  had 
hitherto  dispensed  with.  On  his  conduct  in  these  political 
concerns,  his  wife,  otherwise  influential  as  a  woman  who  be¬ 
longed  to  a  family  with  a  title  in  it,  and  who  had  conde¬ 
scended  in  marrying  him,  could  gain  no  hold ;  she  had  to 
blush  a  little  at  what  was  called  her  husband’s  “  radicalism,” 
—  an  epithet  which  was  a  very  unfair  impeachment  of  Spike, 
who  never  went  to  the  root  of  anything.  But  he  understood 
his  own  trading  affairs,  and  in  this  way  became  a  genuine, 
constant  political  element.  If  he  had  been  born  a  little  later 
he  could  have  been  accepted  as  an  eligible  member  of  Par 
liament,  and  if  he  had  belonged  to  a  high  family  he  might 
have  done  for  a  member  e'  the  Government.  Perhaps  his 


A  POLITICAL  MOLECULE. 


81b 


indifference  to  “views  ”  would  have  passed  for  administrative 
judiciousness,  and  he  would  have  been  so  generally  silent 
that  he  must  often  have  been  silent  in  the  right  place.  But 
this  is  empty  speculation ;  there  is  no  warrant  for  saying 
what  Spike  would  have  been  and  known,  so  as  to  have  made 
a  calculable  political  element,  if  he  had  not  been  educated 
by  having  to  manage  his  trade.  A  small  mind,  trained  to 
useful  occupation  for  the  satisfying  of  private  need,  becomes 
a  representative  of  genuine  class-needs.  Spike  objected  to 
certain  items  of  legislation,  because  they  hampered  his  own 
trade,  but  his  neighbor’s  trade  was  hampered  by  the  same 
causes ;  and  though  he  would  have  been  simply  selfish,  in  a 
question  of  light  or  water  between  himself  and  a  fellow- 
townsman,  his  need  for  a  change  in  legislation,  being  shared 
by  all  his  neighbors  in  trade,  ceased  to  be  simply  selfish,  and 
raised  him  to  a  sense  of  common  injury  and  common  benefit. 
True,  if  the  law  could  have  been  changed  for  the  benefit  of 
his  particular  business,  leaving  the  cotton  trade  in  general  in 
a  sorry  condition  while  he  prospered,  Spike  might  not  have 
thought  that  result  intolerably  unjust ;  but  the  nature  of 
things  did  not  allow  of  such  a  result  being  contemplated  as 
possible ;  it  allowed  of  an  enlarged  market  for  Spike,  only 
through  the  enlargement  of  his  neighbors’  market,  and  the 
Possible  is  always  the  ultimate  master  of  our  efforts  and  de¬ 
sires.  Spike  was  obliged  to  contemplate  a  general  benefit,  and 
thus  became  public-spirited  in  spite  of  himself.  Or  rather, 
the  nature  of  things  transmuted  his  active  egoism  into  a 
demand  for  a  public  benefit. 

Certainly,  if  Spike  had  been  born  a  marquis  he  could  not 
have  had  the  same  chance  of  being  useful  as  a  political  ele¬ 
ment.  But  he  might  have  had  the  same  appearance,  have 
been  equally  null  in  conversation,  sceptical  as  to  the  reality 
of  pleasure,  and  destitute  of  historical  knowledge,  —  perhaps 
even  dimly  disliking  Jesuitism  as  a  quality  in  Catholic  minds, 
or  regarding  Bacon  as  the  inventor  of  physical  science.  The 
depths  of  middle-aged  gentlemen’s  ignorance  will  never  be 
known,  for  want  of  public  examinations  in  this  branch. 


THE  WATCH-DOG  OF  KNOWLEDGE, 


MORDAX  is  an  admirable  man,  ardent  in  intellectual 
work,  public-spirited,  affectionate,  and  able  to  find 
the  right  words  in  conveying  ingenious  ideas  or  elevated 
feeling.  Pity  that  to  all  these  graces  he  cannot  add  what 
would  give  them  the  utmost  finish,  —  the  occasional  admis¬ 
sion  that  he  has  been  in  the  wrong,  the  occasional  frank  wel¬ 
come  of  a  new  idea  as  something  not  before  present  to  his 
mind !  But  no ;  Mordax’s  self-respect  seems  to  be  of  that 
fiery  quality  which  demands  that  none  but  the  monarchs  of 
thought  shall  have  an  advantage  over  him,  and  in  the  pres* 
ence  of  contradiction,  or  the  threat  of  having  his  notions  cor¬ 
rected,  he  becomes  astonishingly  unscrupulous  and  cruel  for 
so  kindly. and  conscientious  a  man. 

“You  are  fond  of  attributing  those  fine  qualities  to 
Mordax,'’  said  Acer,  the  other  day,  “but  I  have  not  much 
belief  in  virtues  that  are  always  requiring  to  be  asserted,  in 
spite  of  appearances  against  them.  True  fairness  and  good¬ 
will  show  themselves  precisely  where  his  are  conspicuously 
absent  —  I  mean  in  recognizing  claims  which  the  rest  of  the 
world  are  not  likely  to  stand  up  for.  It  does  not  need  much 
love  of  truth  and  justice  in  me  to  say  that  Aldebaran  is  a 
oright  star,  or  Isaac  Xewton  the  greatest  of  discoverers ;  or 
much  kindliness  in  me  to  want  my  notes  to  be  heard  above 
the  rest  in  a  chorus  of  hallelujahs  to  one  already  crowned. 
It  is  my  way  to  apply  tests.  Does  the  man  who  has  the 
ear  of  the  public  use  his  advantage  tenderly  toward  poor 
fellows  who  may  be  hindered  of  their  due  if  he  treats  their 
pretensions  with  scorn  ?  That  is  my  test  of  his  justice  and 
benevolence.” 


THE  WATCH-DOG  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 


321 


My  answer  was,  that  his  system  of  moral  tests  might  be 
as  delusive  as  what  ignorant  people  take  to  be  tests  of  in¬ 
tellect  and  learning.  If  the  scholar  or  savant  cannot  answer 
their  haphazard  questions  on  the  shortest  notice,  their  belief 
in  his  capacity  is  shaken.  But  the  better-informed  have  given 
up  the  Johnsonian  theory  of  mind  as  a  pair  of  legs  able  to 
walk  east  or  west  according  to  choice.  Intellect  is  no  longer 
taken  to  be  a  ready-made  dose  of  ability  to  attain  eminence 
(or  mediocrity)  in  all  departments ;  it  is  even  admitted  that 
application  in  one  line  of  study  or  practice  has  often  a  lam¬ 
ing  effect  in  other  directions,  and  that  an  intellectual  quality 
or  special  facility  which  is  a  furtherance  in  one  medium  of 
effort  is  a  drag  in  another.  We  have  convinced  ourselves 
by  this  time  that  a  man  may  be  a  sage  in  celestial  physics, 
and  a  poor  creature  in  the  purchase  of  seed-corn,  or  even  in 
theorizing  about  the  affections ;  that  he  may  be  a  mere  tum¬ 
bler  in  physiology,  and  yet  show  a  keen  insight  into  human 
motives  ;  that  he  may  seem  the  “  poor  Poll  ”  of  the  company 
in  conversation,  and  yet  write  with  some  humorous  vigor.  It 
is  not  true  that  a  man’s  intellectual  power  is,  like  the  strength 
of  a  timber  beam,  to  be  measured  by  its  weakest  point. 

Why  should  we  any  more  apply  that  fallacious  standard 
of  what  is  called  consistency  to  a  man’s  moral  nature ;  and 
argue  against  the  existence  of  fine  impulses  or  habits  of  feel¬ 
ing  in  relation  to  his  actions  generally,  because  those  better 
movements  are  absent  in  a  class  of  cases  which  act  peculiarly 
on  an  irritable  form  of  his  egoism  ?  The  mistake  might  be 
corrected  by  our  taking  notice  that  the  ungenerous  words  or 
acts  which  seem  to  us  the  most  utterly  incompatible  with  good 
dispositions  in  the  offender,  are  those  which  offend  ourselves. 
All  other  persons  are  able  to  draw  a  milder  conclusion.  Lan- 
iger,  who  has  a  temper  but  no  talent  for  repartee,  having 
been  run  down  in  a  fierce  way  by  Mordax,  is  inwardly  per¬ 
suaded  that  the  highly  lauded  man  is  a  wolf  at  heart ;  he  is 
much  tried  by  perceiving  that  his  own  friends  seem  to  think 
no  worse  of  the  reckless  assailant  than  they  did  before ;  and 
Corvus,  who  has  lately  been  flattered  by  some  kindness  from 

Hi 


VOL.  IX. 


322 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


Mordax,  is  unmindful  enough  of  Laniger’s  feeling  to  dwell  on 
this  instance  of  good-nature  with  admiring  gratitude.  There 
is  a  fable  that  when  the  badger  had  been  stung  all  over  by- 
bees,  a  bear  consoled  him  by  a  rhapsodic  account  of  how  he 
himself  had  just  breakfasted  on  their  honey.  The  badger  re¬ 
plied,  peevishly,  “  The  stings  are  in  my  flesh,  and  the  sweet¬ 
ness  is  on  your  muzzle.”  The  bear,  it  is  said,  was  surprised 
at  the  badger’s  want  of  altruism. 

But  this  difference  of  sensibility  between  Laniger  and  his 
friends  only  mirrors  in  a  faint  way  the  difference  between  his 
own  point  of  view  and  that  of  the  man  who  has  injured  him. 
If  those  neutral,  perhaps  even  affectionate  persons,  form  no 
lively  conception  of  what  Laniger  suffers,  how  should  Mor¬ 
dax  have  any  such  sympathetic  imagination  to  check  him  in 
what  he  persuades  himself  is  a  scourging  administered  by  the 
qualified  man  to  the  unqualified  ?  Depend  upon  it,  his  con¬ 
science,  though  active  enough  in  some  relations,  has  never 
given  him  a  twinge  because  of  his  polemical  rudeness  and 
even  brutality.  He  would  go  from  the  room  where  he  has 
been  tiring  himself  through  the  watches  of  the  night,  in  lifting 
and  turning  a  sick  friend,  and  straightway  write  a  reply  or 
rejoinder  in  which  he  mercilessly  pilloried  a  Laniger  who  had 
supposed  that  he  could  tell  the  world  something  else  or  more 
than  had  been  sanctioned  by  the  eminent  Mordax  —  and,  what 
was  worse,  had  sometimes  really  done  so„  Does  this  nullify 
the  genuineness  of  motive  which  made  him  tender  to  his  suf¬ 
fering  friend  ?  Not  at  all.  It  only  proves  that  his  arrogant 
egoism,  set  on  fire,  sends  up  smoke  and  flame  where  just  be¬ 
fore  there  had  been  the  dews  of  fellowship  and  pity.  He 
is  angry,  and  equips  himself  accordingly  —  with  a  penknife  to 
give  the  offender  a  comprachico  countenance,  a  mirror  to  show 
him  the  effect,  and  a  pair  of  nailed  boots  to  give  him  his  dis¬ 
missal.  All  this  to  teach  him  who  the  Romans  really  were, 
and  to  purge  Inquiry  of  incompetent  intrusion,  so  rendering 
an  important  service  to  mankind. 

When  a  man  is  in  a  rage,  and  wants  to  hurt  another  in 
consequence,  he  can.  always  regard  himself  as  the  civil  arm 


THE  WATCH-DOG  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 


323 


of  a  spiritual  power,  and  all  the  more  easily  because  there  is 
real  need  to  assert  the  righteous  efficacy  of  indignation.  1 
for  my  part  feel  with  the  Lanigers,  and  should  object  all  the 
more  to  their  or  my  being  lacerated  and  dressed  with  salt,  if 
the  administrator  of  such  torture  alleged  as  a  motive  his  care 
for  truth  and  posterity,  and  got  himself  pictured  with  a  halo 
in  consequence.  In  transactions  between  fellow-men  it  is 
well  to  consider  a  little,  in  the  first  place,  what  is  fair  and 
kind  toward  the  person  immediately  concerned,  before  we 
spit  and  roast  him  on  behalf  of  the  next  century  but  one. 
Wide-reaching  motives,  blessed  and  glorious  as  they  are,  and 
of  the  highest  sacramental  virtue,  have  their  dangers,  like  all 
else  that  touches  the  mixed  life  of  the  earth.  They  are  arch¬ 
angels  with  awful  brow  and  flaming  sword,  summoning  and 
encouraging  us  to  do  the  right  and  the  divinely  heroic,  and 
we  feel  a  beneficent  tremor  in  their  presence ;  but  to  learn 
what  it  is  they  thus  summon  us  to  do,  we  have  to  consider 
the  mortals  we  are  elbowing,  who  are  of  our  own  stature  and 
our  own  appetites.  I  cannot  feel  sure  how  my  voting  will 
affect  the  condition  of  Central  Asia  in  the  coming  ages,  but 
I  have  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  future  populations  there 
will  be  none  the  worse  off  because  I  abstain  from  conjectural 
vilification  of  my  opponents  during  the  present  parliamentary 
session,  and  I  am  very  sure  that  I  shall  be  less  injurious  to 
my  contemporaries.  On  the  whole,  and  in  the  vast  majority 
of  instances,  the  action  by  which  we  can  do  the  best  for 
future  ages  is  of  the  sort  which  has  a  certain  beneficence  and 
grace  for  contemporaries.  A  sour  father  may  reform  prisons, 
but  considered  in  his  sourness  he  does  harm.  The  deed  of 
J  udas  has  been  attributed  to  far-reaching  views,  and  the  wish 
to  hasten  his  Master’s  declaration  of  himself  as  the  Messiah. 
Perhaps  —  I  will  not  maintain  the  contrary  —  Judas  repre¬ 
sented  his  motive  in  this  way,  and  felt  justified  in  his  trai¬ 
torous  kiss ;  but  my  belief  that  he  deserved,  metaphorically 
speaking,  to  be  where  Dante  saw  him,  at  the  bottom  of  the 
Malebolge,  would  not  be  the  less  strong  because  he  was  not 
convinced  that  his  action  was  detestable.  I  refuse  to  accept 


32* 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


a  man,  who  has  the  stomach  for  such  treachery,  as  a  hero 
impatient  for  the  redemption  of  mankind,  and  for  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  a  reign  when  the  kisses  shall  be  those  of  peace 
and  righteousness. 

All  this  is  by  the  way,  to  show  that  my  apology  for  Mor- 
dax  was  not  found  on  his  persuasion  of  superiority  in  his  own 
motives,  but  on  the  compatibility  of  unfair,  equivocal,  and 
even  cruel  actions  with  a  nature  which,  apart  from  special 
temptations,  is  kindly  and  generous  ;  and  also  to  enforce  the 
need  of  checks,  from  a  fellow-feeling  with  those  whom  our 
acts  immediately  (not  distantly)  concern.  Will  any  one  be 
so  hardy  as  to  maintain  that  an  otherwise  worthy  man  cannot 
be  vain  and  arrogant?  I  think  most  of  us  have  some  in¬ 
terest  in  arguing  the  contrary.  And  it  is  of  the  nature  of 
vanity  and  arrogance,  if  unchecked,  to  become  cruel  and 
self -justifying.  There  are  fierce  beasts  within ;  chain  them, 
chain  them,  and  let  them  learn  to  cower  before  the  creature 
with  wider  reason.  This  is  what  one  wishes  for  Mordax  — • 
that  his  heart  and  brain  should  restrain  the  outleap  of  roar 
and  talons. 

As  to  his  unwillingness  to  admit  that  an  idea  which  he 
has  not  discovered  is  novel  to  him,  one  is  surprised  that 
quick  intellect  and  shrewd  observation  do  not  early  gather 
reasons  for  being  ashamed  of  a  mental  trick  which  makes 
one  among  the  comic  parts  of  that  various  actor,  Conceited 
Ignorance. 

I  have  a  sort  of  valet  and  factotum,  an  excellent,  respect¬ 
able  servant,  whose  spelling  is  so  unvitiated  by  non-plionetic 
superfluities  that  he  writes  night  as  nit .  One  day,  looking  over 
his  accounts,  I  said  to  him  jocosely :  “  You  are  in  the  latest 
fashion  with  your  spelling,  Pummel ;  most  people  spell 
1  night  ’  with  a  gh  between  the  i  and  the  t,  but  the  greatest 
scholars  now  spell  it  as  you  do.”  “  So  I  suppose,  sir,”  says 
Pummel ;  “  I ’ve  seen  it  with  a  gh,  but  I ’ve  noways  give  in  to 
that  myself.”  You  would  never  catch  Pummel  in  an  inter¬ 
jection  of  surprise.  I  have  sometimes  laid  traps  for  his  aston¬ 
ishment  ;  but  he  has  escaped  them  all,  either  by  a  respectful 


THE  WATCH-DOG  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 


825 


neutrality,  as  of  one  who  would  not  appear  to  notice  that  his 
master  had  been  taking  too  much  wine,  or  else  by  that  strong 
persuasion  of  his  all-knowingness,  which  makes  it  simply  im¬ 
possible  for  him  to  feel  himself  newly  informed.  If  I  tell  him 
that  the  world  is  spinning  round  and  along  like  a  top,  and  that 
he  is  spinning  with  it,  he  says,  “  Yes,  I  ?ve  heard  a  deal  of  that 
in  my  time,  sir,”  and  lifts  the  horizontal  lines  of  his  brow 
a  little  higher,  balancing  his  head  from  side  to  side  as  if  it 
were  too  painfully  full.  Whether  I  tell  him  that  they  cook 
puppies  in  China,  that  there  are  ducks  with  fur  coats  in 
Australia,  or  that  in  some  parts  of  the  world  it  is  the  pink  of 
politeness  to  put  your  tongue  out  on  introduction  to  a  re¬ 
spectable  stranger,  Pummel  replies,  “So  I  suppose,  sir,”  with 
an  air  of  resignation  to  hearing  my  poor  version  of  well- 
known  things,  such  as  elders  use  in  listening  to  lively  boys 
lately  presented  with  an  anecdote-book.  His  utmost  con¬ 
cession  is  that  what  you  state  is  what  he  would  have  sup-' 
plied  if  you  had  given  him  carte  blanche  instead  of  your 
needless  instruction,  and  in  this  sense  his  favorite  answer  is, 
“I  should  say.” 

“  Pummel,”  I  observed,  a  little  irritated  at  not  getting  my 
coffee,  “  if  you  were  to  carry  your  kettle  and  spirits  of  wine 
up  a  mountain  of  a  morning,  your  water  would  boil  there 
sooner.”  “  I  should  say,  sir.”  Or,  “  There  are  boiling  springs 
in  Iceland.  Better  go  to  Iceland.”  “  That ’s  what  I ’ve  been 
thinking,  sir.” 

I  have  taken  to  asking  him  hard  questions,  and,  as  I 
expected,  he  never  admits  his  own  inability  to  answer 
them,  without  representing  it  as  common  to  the  human  race. 
“What  is  the  cause  of  the  tides,  Pummel?”  “Well,  sir, 
nobody  rightly  knows.  Many  gives  their  opinion,  but  if  I 
was  to  give  mine,  it  ’ud  be  different.” 

But  while  he  is  never  surprised  himself,  he  is  constantly 
imagining  situations  of  surprise  for  others.  His  own  con¬ 
sciousness  is  that  of  one  so  thoroughly  soaked  in  knowledge 
that  further  absorption  is  impossible ;  but  his  neighbors  appear 
to  him  to  be  in  the  state  of  thirsty  sponges,  which  it  is  a 


326 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


charity  to  besprinkle.  His  great  interest  in  thinking  of  for¬ 
eigners  is  that  they  must  be  surprised  at  what  they  see  in 
England,  and  especially  at  the  beef.  He  is  often  occupied 
with  the  surprise  Adam  must  have  felt  at  the  sight  of  the 
assembled  animals  —  “  for  he  was  not  like  us,  sir,  used  from 
a  b’y  to  Womb  well’s  shows.”  He  is  fond  of  discoursing  to 
the  lad  who  acts  as  shoeblack  and  general  subaltern,  and  I 
have  overheard  him  saying  to  that  small  upstart,  with  some 
severity,  “  Now  don’t  you  pretend  to  know,  because  the  more 
you  pretend  the  more  I  see  your  ignirance  ” —  a  lucidity  on 
his  part  which  has  confirmed  my  impression  that  the  thor¬ 
oughly  self-satisfied  person  is  the  only  one  fully  to  appreciate 
the  charm  of  humility  in  others. 

Your  diffident,  self-suspecting  mortal  is  not  very  angry  that 
others  should  feel  more  comfortable  about  themselves,  pro¬ 
vided  they  are  not  otherwise  offensive  :  he  is  rather  like  the 
chilly  person,  glad  to  sit  next  a  warmer  neighbor;  or  the 
timid,  glad  to  have  a  courageous  fellow-traveller.  It  cheers 
him  to  observe  the  store  of  small  comforts  that  his  fellow- 
creatures  may  find  in  their  self-complacency,  just  as  one  is 
pleased  to  see  poor  old  souls  soothed  by  the  tobacco  and  snuff 
for  which  one  has  neither  nose  nor  stomach  one’s  self. 

But  your  arrogant  man  will  not  tolerate  a  presumption 
which  he  sees  to  be  ill-founded.  The  service  he  regards  so¬ 
ciety  as  most  in  need  of,  is  to  put  down  the  conceit  which  is 
so  particularly  rife  around  him  that  he  is  inclined  to  believe 
it  the  growing  characteristic  of  the  present  age.  In  the 
schools  of  Magna  Grsecia,  or  in  the  sixth  century  of  our  era, 
or  even  under  Kublai  Khan,  he  finds  a  comparative  freedom 
from  that  presumption  by  which  his  contemporaries  are  stir¬ 
ring  his  able  gall.  The  way  people  will  now  flaunt  notions 
which  are  not  his,  without  appearing  to  mind  that  they  are 
not  his,  strikes  him  as  especially  disgusting.  It  might  seem 
surprising  to  us  that  one  strongly  convinced  of  his  own  value 
should  prefer  to  exalt  an  age  in  which  he  did  not  flourish,  if 
it  were  not  for  the  reflection  that  the  present  age  is  the  only 
in  which  anybody  has  appeared  to  undervalue  him. 


A  HALF-BREED. 


N  early,  deep-seated  love  to  which  we  become  faith- 


less  has  its  unfailing  Nemesis,  if  only  in  that  division 
of  soul  which  narrows  all  newer  joys  by  the  intrusion  of  re¬ 
gret  and  the  established  presentiment  of  change.  I  refer  not 
merely  to  the  love  of  a  person,  but  to  the  love  of  ideas,  prac¬ 
tical  beliefs,  and  social  habits.  And  faithlessness  here  means 
not  a  gradual  conversion,  dependent  on  enlarged  knowledge, 
but  a  yielding  to  seductive  circumstance ;  not  a  conviction 
that  the  original  choice  was  a  mistake,  but  a  subjection  to 
incidents  that  flatter  a  growing  desire.  In  this  sort  of  love 
it  is  the  forsaker  who  has  the  melancholy  lot ;  for  an  aban¬ 
doned  belief  may  be  more  effectively  vengeful  than  Dido.  The 
child  of  a  wandering  tribe,  caught  young  and  trained  to  polite 
life,  if  he  feels  a  hereditary  yearning,  can  run  away  to  the 
old  wilds  and  get  his  nature  into  tune.  But  there  is  no  such 
recovery  possible  to  the  man  who  remembers  what  he  once 
believed,  without  being  convinced  that  he  was  in  error ;  who 
feels  within  himself  unsatisfied  stirrings  toward  old  beloved 
habits,  and  intimacies  from  which  he  has  far  receded,  without 
conscious  justification  or  unwavering  sense  of  superior  attrac¬ 
tiveness  in  the  new.  This  involuntary  renegade  has  his 
character  hopelessly  jangled  and  out  of  tune.  He  is  like  an 
organ  with  its  stops  in  the  lawless  condition  of  obtruding 
themselves  without  method,  so  that  hearers  are  amazed  by 
the  most  unexpected  transitions  —  the  trumpet  breaking  in 
on  the  flute,  and  the  oboe  confounding  both. 

Hence  the  lot  of  Mixtus  affects  me  pathetically,  notwith¬ 
standing  that  he  spends  his  growing  wealth  with  liberality 


328 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


and  manifest  enjoyment.  To  most  observers  he  appears  to 
be  simply  one  of  the  fortunate  and  also  sharp  commercial 
men,  who  began  with  meaning  to  be  rich,  and  have  become 
what  they  meant  to  be  —  a  man  never  taken  to  be  well-born, 
but  surprisingly  better  informed  than  the  well-born  usually 
are,  and  distinguished  among  ordinary  commercial  magnates 
by  a  personal  kindness  which  prompts  him  not  only  to  help 
the  suffering  in  a  material  way  through  his  wealth,  but  also 
by  direct  ministration  of  his  own ;  yet  with  all  this,  diffusing, 
as  it  were,  the  odor  of  a  man  delightedly  conscious  of  his 
wealth,  as  an  equivalent  for  the  other  social  distinctions  of 
rank  and  intellect,  which  he  can  thus  admire  without  envying. 
Hardly  one  among  those  superficial  observers  can  suspect  that 
he  aims  or  has  ever  aimed  at  being  a  writer :  still  less  can 
they  imagine  that  his  mind  is  often  moved  by  strong  currents 
of  regret,  and  of  the  most  unworldly  sympathies,  from  the 
memories  of  a  youthful  time  when  his  chosen  associates  were 
men  and  women  whose  only  distinction  was  a  religious,  a 
philanthropic,  or  an  intellectual  enthusiasm ;  when  the  lady, 
on  whose  words  his  attention  most  hung,  was  a  writer  of 
minor  religious  literature ;  when  he  was  a  visitor  and  exhorter 
of  the  poor  in  the  alleys  of  a  great  provincial  town,  and  when 
he  attended  the  lectures  given  especially  to  young  men  by 
Mr.  Apollos,  the  eloquent  Congregational  preacher,  who  had 
studied  in  Germany,  and  had  liberal  advanced  views,  then 
far  beyond  the  ordinary  teaching  of  his  sect.  At  that  time 
Mixtus  thought  himself  a  young  man  of  socially  reforming 
ideas,  of  religious  principles  and  religious  yearnings.  It  was 
within  his  prospects  also  to  be  rich,  but  he  looked  forward  to 
a  use  of  his  riches  chiefly  for  reforming  and  religious  pur¬ 
poses.  His  opinions  were  of  a  strongly  democratic  stamp ; 
except  that  even  then,  belonging  to  the  class  of  employers, 
he  was  opposed  to  all  demands  in  the  employed  that  would 
restrict  the  expansiveness  of  trade.  He  was  the  most  demo 
cratic  in  relation  to  the  unreasonable  privileges  of  the  aris- 
tocracy  and  landed  interest,  and  he  had  also  a  religious  sense 
of  brotherhood  with  the  poor.  Altogether  he  was  a  sincerely 


A  HALF-BREED. 


329 


benevolent  young  man,  interested  in  ideas,  and  renouncing 
personal  ease  for  the  sake  of  study,  religious  communion,  and 
good  works.  If  you  had  known  him  then,  you  would  have 
expected  him  to  marry  a  highly  serious  and  perhaps  literary 
woman,  sharing  his  benevolent  and  religious  habits,  and  likely 
to  encourage  his  studies  —  a  woman  who,  along  with  himself, 
would  play  a  distinguished  part  in  one  of  the  most  enlight¬ 
ened  religious  circles  of  a  great  provincial  capital. 

How  is  it  that  Mixtus  finds  himself  in  a  London  mansion, 
and  in  society  totally  unlike  that  which  made  the  ideal  of 
his  younger  years  ?  And  whom  did  he  marry  ? 

Why,  he  married  Scintilla,  who  fascinated  him,  as  she  had 
fascinated  others,  by  her  prettiness,  her  liveliness,  and  her 
music.  It  is  a  common  enough  case,  that  of  a  man  being 
suddenly  captivated  by  a  woman  nearly  the  opposite  of  his 
ideal ;  or,  if  not  wholly  captivated,  at  least  effectively  cap¬ 
tured,  by  a  combination  of  circumstances,  along  with  an  un¬ 
warily  manifested  inclination  which  might  otherwise  have 
been  transient.  Mixtus  was  captivated  and  then  captured 
on  the  worldly  side  of  his  disposition,  which  had  been  always 
growing  and  flourishing  side  by  side  with  his  philanthropic 
and  religious  tastes.  He  had  ability  in  business,  and  he  had 
early  meant  to  be  rich ;  also,  he  was  getting  rich,  and  the 
taste  for  such  success  was  naturally  growing  with  the  pleas¬ 
ure  of  rewarded  exertion.  It  was  during  a  business  sojourn 
in  London  that  he  met  Scintilla,  who,  though  without  for¬ 
tune,  associated  with  families  of  Greek  merchants  living  in 
a  style  of  splendor,  and  with  artists  patronized  by  such 
wealthy  entertainers.  Mixtus  on  this  occasion  became  famil¬ 
iar  with  a  world  in  which  wealth  seemed  the  key  to  a  more 
brilliant  sort  of  dominance  than  that  of  a  religious  patron  in 
the  provincial  circles  of  X.  Would  it  not  be  possible  to 
unite  the  two  kinds  of  sway  ?  A  man  bent  on  the  most  use¬ 
ful  ends  might,  with  a  fortune  large  enough ,  make  morality 
magnificent,  and  recommend  religious  principle  by  showing 
it  in  combination  with  the  best  kind  of  house  and  the  most 
liberal  of  tables ;  also  with  a  wife  whose  graces,  wit,  and 


330 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


accomplishments  gave  a  finish — sometimes  lacking,  even  to 
establishments  got  up  with  that  unhesitating  worldliness  to 
which  high  cost  is  a  sufficient  reason.  Enough. 

Mixtus  married  Scintilla.  Now  this  lively  lady  knew 
nothing  of  Non-conformists,  except  that  they  were  unfashion¬ 
able  ;  she  did  not  distinguish  one  conventicle  from  another ; 
and  Mr.  Apollos,  with  his  enlightened  interpretations,  seemed 
to  her  as  heavy  a  bore,  if  not  quite  so  ridiculous,  as  Mr.  Johns 
could  have  been,  with  his  solemn  twang,  at  the  Baptist  chapel 
in  the  lowest  suburbs,  or  as  a  local  preacher  among  the  Meth¬ 
odists.  In  general,  people  who  appeared  seriously  to  believe 
in  any  sort  of  doctrine,  whether  religious,  social,  or  philo¬ 
sophical,  seemed  rather  absurd  to  Scintilla.  Ten  to  one  these 
theoretic  people  pronounced  oddly,  had  some  reason  or  other 
for  saying  that  the  most  agreeable  things  were  wrong,  wore 
objectionable  clothes,  and  wanted  you  to  subscribe  to  some¬ 
thing.  They  were  probably  ignorant  of  art  and  music,  did 
not  understand  badinage,  and,  in  fact,  could  talk  of  nothing 
amusing.  In  Scintilla’s  eyes  the  majority  of  persons  were 
ridiculous,  and  deplorably  wanting  in  that  keen  perception 
of  what  was  good  taste  with  which  she  herself  was  blessed  by 
nature  and  education ;  but  the  people  understood  to  be  re¬ 
ligious,  or  otherwise  theoretic,  were  the  most  ridiculous  of 
all,  without  being  proportionately  amusing  and  invitable. 

Did  Mixtus  not  discover  this  view  of  Scintilla’s  before 
their  marriage  ?  Or  did  he  allow  her  to  remain  in  ignorance 
of  habits  and  opinions  which  had  made  half  the  occupation 
of  his  youth  ? 

When  a  man  is  inclined  to  marry  a  particular  woman,  and 
has  made  any  committal  of  himself,  this  woman’s  opinions, 
however  different  from  his  own,  are  readily  regarded  as  part 
of  her  pretty  ways,  especially  if  they  are  merely  negative ; 
as,  for  example,  that  she  does  not  insist  on  the  Trinity,  or  on 
the  rightfulness  or  expediency  of  Church  rates,  but  simply 
regards  her  lover’s  troubling  himself  in  disputation  on  these 
heads  as  stuff  and  nonsense.  The  man  feels  his  own  superior 
strength,  and  is  sure  that  marriage  will  make  no  difference 


A  HALF-BREED. 


331 


to  him  on  the  subjects  about  which  he  is  in  earnest.  And 
to  laugh  at  men’s  affairs  is  a  woman’s  privilege,  tending  to 
enliven  the  domestic  hearth.  If  Scintilla  had  no  liking 
for  the  best  sort  of  Non-conformity,  she  was  without  any 
troublesome  bia^  toward  Episcopacy,  Anglicanism,  and  early 
sacraments,  and  was  quite  contented  not  to  go  to  church. 

As  to  Scintilla’s  acquaintance  with  her  lover’s  tastes  on 
these  subjects,  she  was  equally  convinced  on  her  side  that  a 
husband’s  queer  ways,  while  he  was  a  bachelor,  would  be  easily 
laughed  out  of  him  when  he  had  married  an  adroit  woman. 
Mixtus,  she  felt,  was  an  excellent  creature,  quite  likable,  who 
was  getting  rich ;  and  Scintilla  meant  to  have  all  the  advan¬ 
tages  of  a  rich  man’s  wife.  She  was  not  in  the  least  a  wicked 
woman;  she  was  simply  a  pretty  animal  of  the  ape  kind, 
with  an  aptitude  for  certain  accomplishments,  which  educa¬ 
tion  had  made  the  most  of. 

But  we  have  seen  what  has  been  the  result  to  poor  Mixtus. 
He  has  become  richer  even  than  he  dreamed  of  being,  has  a 
little  palace  in  London,  and  entertains  with  splendor  the  half- 
aristocratic,  professional,  and  artistic  society  which  he  is 
proud  to  think  select.  This  society  regards  him  as  a  clever 
fellow  in  his  particular  branch,  seeing  that  he  has  become  a 
considerable  capitalist,  and  as  a  man  desirable  to  have  on  the 
list  of  one’s  acquaintance.  But  from  every  other  point  of 
view  Mixtus  finds  himself  personally  submerged :  what  he 
happens  to  think  is  not  felt  by  his  esteemed  guests  to  be  of 
any  consequence ;  and  what  he  used  to  think,  with  the  ardor 
of  conviction,  he  now  hardly  ever  expresses.  He  is  trans¬ 
planted,  and  the  sap  within  him  has  long  been  diverted  into 
other  than  the  old  lines  of  vigorous  growth.  How  could  he 
speak  to  the  artist  Crespi,  or  to  Sir  Hong  Kong  Bantam, 
about  the  enlarged  doctrine  of  Mr.  Apollos  ?  How  could  he 
mention  to  them  his  former  efforts  toward  evangelizing  the 
inhabitants  of  the  X.  alleys  ?  And  his  references  to  his  his¬ 
torical  and  geographical  studies,  toward  a  survey  of  possible 
markets  for  English  products,  are  received  with  an  air  of 
ironical  suspicion  by  many  of  his  political  friends,  who  take 


332 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


his  pretension  to  give  advice  concerning  the  Amazon,  the 
Euphrates,  and  the  Niger,  as  equivalent  to  the  currier’s  wide 
views  on  the  applicability  of  leather.  He  can  only  make  a 
figure  through  his  genial  hospitality.  It  is  in  vain  that  he 
buys  the  best  pictures  and  statues  of  the  best  artists.  Nobody 
will  call  him  a  judge  in  art.  If  his  pictures  and  statues  are 
well  chosen,  it  is  generally  thought  that  Scintilla  told  him 
what  to  buy ;  and  yet  Scintilla,  in*  other  connections,  is 
spoken  of  as  having  only  a  superficial  and  often  questionable 
taste.  Mixtus,  it  is  decided,  is  a  good  fellow,  not  ignorant, 
no  —  really  having  a  good  deal  of  knowledge  as  well  as  sense, 
but  not  easy  to  classify  otherwise  than  as  a  rich  man.  He 
has,  consequently,  become  a  little  uncertain  as  to  his  own 
point  of  view;  and  in  his  most  unreserved  moments  of  friendly 
intercourse,  even  when  speaking  to  listeners  whom  he  thinks 
likely  to  sympathize  with  the  earlier  part  of  his  career,  he 
presents  himself  in  all  his  various  aspects,  and  feels  himself 
in  turn  what  he  has  been,  what  he  is,  and  what  others  take 
him  to  be  (for  this  last  status  is  what  we  must  all  more  or 
less  accept).  He  will  recover  with  some  glow  of  enthusiasm 
the  vision  of  his  old  associates,  the  particular  limit  he  was 
once  accustomed  to  trace  of  freedom  in  religious  speculation, 
and  his  old  ideal  of  a  worthy  life ;  but  he  will  presently  pass 
to  the  argument  that  money  is  the  only  means  by  which  you 
can  get  what  is  best  worth  having  in  the  world,  and  will 
arrive  at  the  exclamation,  “  Give  me  money  !  ”  with  the  tone 
and  gesture  of  a  man  who  both  feels  and  knows.  Then  if  one 
of  his  audience,  not  having  money,  remarks  that  a  man  may 
have  made  up  his  mind  to  do  without  money,  because  he  pre¬ 
fers  something  else,  Mixtus  is  with  him  immediately,  cor¬ 
dially  concurring  in  the  supreme  value  of  mind  and  genius, 
which  indeed  make  his  own  chief  delight,  in  that  he  is  able 
to  entertain  the  admirable  possessors  of  these  attributes  at  his 
own  table,  though  not  himself  reckoned  among  them.  Yet  he 
will  proceed  to  observe  there  was  a  time  when  he  sacrificed  his 
sleep  to  study ;  and  even  now,  amidst  the  press  of  business,  he 
from  time  to  time  thinks  of  taking  up  the  manuscripts  which 


A  HALF-BREED. 


333 


he  hopes  some  aay  to  complete,  and  is  always  increasing  his 
collection  of  valuable  works  bearing  on  his  favorite  topics. 
And  it  is  true  that  he  has  read  much  in  certain  directions, 
and  can  remember  what  he  has  read ;  he  knows  the  history 
and  theories  of  colonization,  and  the  social  condition  of 
countries  that  do  not  at  present  consume  a  sufficiently  large 
share  of  our  products  and  manufactures.  He  continues  his 
early  habit  of  regarding  the  spread  of  Christianity  as  a  great 
result  of  our  commercial  intercourse  with  black,  brown,  and 
yellow  populations ;  but  this  is  an  idea  not  spoken  of  in  the 
sort  of  fashionable  society  that  Scintilla  collects  round  her 
husband’s  table ;  and  Mixtus  now  philosophically  reflects  that 
the  cause  must  come  before  the  effect,  and  that  the  thing  to 
be  directly  striven  for  is  the  commercial  intercourse  —  not 
excluding  a  little  war,  if  that  also  should  prove  needful  as  a 
pioneer  of  Christianity.  He  has  long  been  wont  to  feel  bash¬ 
ful  about  his  former  religion,  as  if  it  were  an  old  attachment, 
having  consequences  which  he  did  not  abandon  but  kept  in 
decent  privacy,  his  avowed  objects  and  actual  position  being 
incompatible  with  their  public  acknowledgment. 

There  is  the  same  kind  of  fluctuation  in  his  aspect  toward 
social  questions  and  duties.  He  has  not  lost  the  kindness 
that  used  to  make  him  a  benefactor  and  succorer  of  the  needy, 
and  he  is  still  liberal  in  helping  forward  the  clever  and  indus¬ 
trious  ;  but  in  his  active  superintendence  of  commercial  un¬ 
dertakings  he  has  contracted  more  and  more  of  the  bitterness 
which  capitalists  and  employers  often  feel  to  be  a  reason¬ 
able  mood  toward  obstructive  proletaries.  Hence  many  who 
have  occasionally  met  him  when  trade  questions  were  being 
discussed,  conclude  him  to  be  indistinguishable  from  the 
ordinary  run  of  moneyed  and  money-getting  men.  Indeed, 
hardly  any  of  his  acquaintances  know  what  Mixtus  really  is, 
considered  as  a  whole  — nor  does  Mixtus  himself  know  it. 


DEBASING  THE  MORAL  CURRENCY. 


“  L  ne  faut  pas  mettre  un  ridicule  ou  il  n’y  en  a  point :  c’est 


a  se  gater  le  gout,  c’est  corrompre  son  jugement  et  celui 
des  autres.  Mais  le  ridicule  qui  est  quelque  part,  il  faut  l’y 
voir,  l’en  tirer  avec  grace  et  d’une  maniere  qui  plaise  et  qui 
instruise.” 

I  anr  fond  of  quoting  this  passage  from  La  Bruyere,  because 
the  subject  is  one  where  I  like  to  show  a  Frenchman  on  my 
side,  to  save  my  sentiments  from  being  set  down  to  my  pecul¬ 
iar  dulness  and  deficient  sense  of  the  ludicrous  ;  and  also  that 
they  may  profit  by  that  enhancement  of  ideas  when  presented 
in  a  foreign  tongue,  that  glamour  of  unfamiliarity  conferring 
a  dignity  on  the  foreign  names  of  very  common  things,  of 
which  even  a  philosopher  like  Dugald  Stewart  confesses  the 
influence.  I  remember  hearing  a  fervid  woman  attempt  to 
recite  in  English  the  narrative  of  a  begging  Frenchman,  who 
described  the  violent  death  of  his  father  in  the  July  days. 
The  narrative  had  impressed  her,  through  the  mists  of  her 
flushed  anxiety  to  understand  it,  as  something  quite  grandly 
pathetic ;  but  finding  the  facts  turn  out  meagre,  and  her  audi¬ 
ence  cold,  she  broke  off,  saying,  “  It  sounded  so  much  finer 
in  French  —  J’ai  vu  le  sang  de  mon  pere  and  so  on  —  I  wish  I 
could  repeat  it  in  French.”  This  was  a  pardonable  illusion 
in  an  old-fashioned  lady,  who  had  not  received  the  polyglot 
education  of  the  present  day ;  but  I  observe  that  even  now 
much  nonsense  and  bad  taste  win  admiring  acceptance  solely 
by  virtue  of  the  French  language,  and  one  may  fairly  desire 
that  what  seems  just  discrimination  should  profit  by  the 
fashionable  prejudice  in  favor  of  La  Bruyere’s  idiom.  But 


DEBASING  THE  MORAL  CURRENCY. 


335 


I  wish  he  had  added  that  the  habit  of  dragging  the  ludicrous 
into  topics  where  the  chief  interest  is  of  a  different  or  even 
opposite  kind,  is  a  sign  not  of  endowment  but  of  deficiency. 
The  art  of  spoiling  is  within  reach  of  the  dullest  faculty  : 
the  coarsest  clown,  with  a  hammtr  in  his  hand,  might  chip 
the  nose  off  every  statue  and  bust  in  the  Vatican,  and  stand 
grinning  at  the  effect  of  his  work.  Because  wit  is  an  exqui¬ 
site  product  of  high  powers,  we  are  not  therefore  forced  to 
admit  the  sadly  confused  inference  of  the  monotonous  jester, 
that  he  is  establishing  his  superiority  over  every  less  face¬ 
tious  person,  and  over  every  topic  on  which  he  is  ignorant 
or  insensible,  by  being  uneasy  until  he  has  distorted  it  in 
the  small  cracked  mirror  which  he  carries  about  with  him 
as  a  joking  apparatus.  Some  high  authority  is  needed  to 
give  many  worthy  and  timid  persons  the  freedom  of  muscular 
repose,  under  the  growing  demand  on  them  to  laugh  when 
they  have  no  other  reason  than  the  peril  of  being  taken  for 
dullards ;  still  more,  to  inspire  them  with  the  courage  to  say 
that  they  object  to  the  theatrical  spoiling,  for  themselves  and 
their  children,  of  all  affecting  themes,  all  the  grander  deeds 
and  aims  of  men,  by  burlesque  associations,  adapted  to  the 
taste  of  rich  fishmongers  in  the  stalls  and  their  assistants  in 
the  gallery.  The  English  people  in  the  present  generation 
are  falsely  reputed  to  know  Shakspeare  (as  by  some  innG- 
cent  persons  the  Florentine  mule-drivers  are  believed  to  have 
known  the  “  Divina  Commedia,”  not,  perhaps,  excluding  all  the 
subtle  discourses  in  the  Purgatorio  and  ParacLiso)  ;  but  there 
seems  a  clear  prospect  that  in  the  coming  generation  he 
will  be  known  to  them  through  burlesques,  and  that  his 
plays  will  find  a  new  life  as  pantomimes.  A  bottle-nosed 
Lear  will  come  on  with  a  monstrous  corpulence,  from  which 
he  will  frantically  dance  himself  free  during  the  midnight 
storm ;  Rosalind  and  Celia  will  join  in  a  grotesque  ballet 
with  shepherds  and  shepherdesses ;  Opnelia,  in  fleshings 
and  a  voluminous  brevity  of  grenadine,  will  dance  through 
the  mad  scene,  finishing  with  the  famous  “attitude  of  the 
scissors  ”  in  the  arms  of  Laertes ;  and  all  the  speeches  in 


336 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


“Hamlet”  will  be  so  ingeniously  parodied  that  the  origi¬ 
nals  will  be  reduced  to  a  mere  memoria  technica  of  the  im¬ 
prover’s  puns  —  premonitory  signs  of  a  hideous  millennium, 
in  which  the  lion  will  have  to  lie  down  with  the  lascivious 
monkeys,  whom  (if  we  may  trust  Pliny)  his  soul  naturally 
abhors. 

I  have  been  amazed  to  find  that  some  artists,  whose  own 
works  have  the  ideal  stamp,  are  quite  insensible  to  the  damag¬ 
ing  tendency  of  the  burlesquing  spirit  which  ranges  to  and 
fro,  and  up  and  down,  on  the  earth,  seeing  no  reason  (except 
a  precarious  censorship)  why  it  should  not  appropriate  every 
sacred,  heroic,  and  pathetic  theme  which  serves  to  make  up 
the  treasure  of  human  admiration,  hope,  and  love.  One 
would  have  thought  that  tlieir  own  half-despairing  efforts  to 
invest  in  worthy  outward  shape  the  vague  inward  impressions 
of  sublimity,  and  the  consciousness  of  an  implicit  ideal  in  the 
commonest  scenes,  might  have  made  them  susceptible  of 
some  disgust  or  alarm  at  a  species  of  burlesque  which  is 
likely  to  render  their  compositions  no  better  than  a  dissolv¬ 
ing  view,  where  every  noble  form  is  seen  melting  into  its 
preposterous  caricature.  It  used  to  be  imagined  of  the 
unhappy  medueval  Jews  that  they  parodied  Calvary  by  cru¬ 
cifying  dogs ;  if  they  had  been  guilty,  they  would  at  least 
have  had  the  excuse  of  the  hatred  and  rage  begotten  by 
persecution.  Are  we  on  the  way  to  a  parody  which  shall 
have  no  other  excuse  than  the  reckless  search  after  fodder 
for  degraded  appetites  —  after  the  pay  to  be  earned  by  pas¬ 
turing  Circe’s  herd  where  they  may  defile  every  monument 
of  that  growing  life  which  should  have  kept  them  human  ? 

The  world  seems  to  me  well  supplied  with  what  is  genu¬ 
inely  ridiculous ;  wit  and  humor  may  play  as  harmlessly  or 
beneficently  round  the  changing  facets  of  egoism,  absurdity, 
and  vice,  as  the  sunshine  over  the  rippling  sea  or  the  dew}' 
meadows.  Why  should  we  make  our  delicious  sense  of  the 
ludicrous  —  with  its  invigorating  shocks  of  laughter,  and  its 
irrepressible  smiles,  which  are  the  outglow  of  an  inward 
radiation  as  gentle  and  cheering  as  the  warmth  of  morning  — 


DEBASING  THE  MORAL  CURRENCY. 


33? 


flourish  like  a  brigand  on  the  robbery  of  our  mental  wealth  ? 
or  let  it  take  its  exercise  as  a  madman  might,  if  allowed  a 
free  nightly  promenade,  by  drawing  the  populace  with  bon¬ 
fires  which  leave  some  venerable  structure  a  blackened  ruin, 
or  send  a  scorching  smoke  across  the  portraits  of  the  past,  at 
which  we  once  looked  with  a  loving  recognition  of  fellowship, 
and  disfigure  them  into  butts  of  mockery  ?  —  nay,  worse, 
use  it  to  degrade  the  healthy  appetites  and  affections  of  oui 
nature,  as  they  are  seen  to  be  degraded  in  insane  patients, 
whose  system,  all  out  of  joint,  finds  matter  for  screaming 
laughter  in  mere  topsy-turvy,  makes  every  passion  preposter¬ 
ous  or  obscene,  and  turns  the  hard-won  order  of  life  into  a 
second  chaos,  hideous  enough  to  make  one  wail  that  the  first 
was  ever  thrilled  with  light  ? 

This  is  what  I  call  debasing  the  moral  currency :  lowering 
the  value  of  every  inspiring  fact  and  tradition,  so  that  it  will 
command  less  and  less  of  the  spiritual  products,  the  generous 
motives,  which  sustain  the  charm  and  elevation  of  our  social 
existence  —  the  something  besides  bread  by  which  man  saves 
his  soul  alive.  The  bread-winner  of  the  family  may  demand 
more  and  more  coppery  shillings  or  assignats  or  greenbacks 
for  his  day’s  work,  and  so  get  the  needful  quantum  of  food ; 
but  let  that  moral  currency  be  emptied  of  its  value,  let  a 
greedy  buffoonery  debase  all  historic  beauty,  majesty,  and 
pathos,  and  the  more  you  heap  up  the  desecrated  symbols, 
the  greater  will  be  the  lack  of  the  ennobling  emotions  which 
subdue  the  tyranny  of  suffering,  and  make  ambition  one  with 
social  virtue. 

And  yet,  it  seems,  parents  will  put  into  the  hands  of  their 
children  ridiculous  parodies  (perhaps  with  more  ridiculous 
illustrations)  of  the  poems  which  stirred  their  own  ten¬ 
derness  or  filial  piety,  and  carry  them  to  make  their  first 
acquaintance  with  great  men,  great  works,  or  solemn  crises, 
through  the  medium  of  some  miscellaneous  burlesque,  which, 
with  its  idiotic  puns  and  farcical  attitudes,  will  remain  among 
their  primary  associations,  and  reduce  them,  throughout  their 
time  of  studious  preparation  for  life,  to  the  moral  imbecility 

22 


VOL.  IX. 


338 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


of  an  inward  giggle  at  what  might  have  stimulated  their  high 
emulation,  or  fed  the  fountains  of  compassion,  trust,  and  con¬ 
stancy.  One  wonders  where  these  parents  have  deposited 
that  stock  of  morally  educating  stimuli  which  is  to  be  inde¬ 
pendent  of  poetic  tradition,  and  to  subsist,  in  spite  of  the 
finest  images  being  degraded,  and  the  finest  works  of 
genius  being  poisoned  as  with  some  befooling  drug. 

Will  fine  wit,  will  exquisite  humor,  prosper  the  more 
through  this  turning  of  all  things  indiscriminately  into  food 
for  a  gluttonous  laughter,  an  idle  craving,  without  sense  of 
flavors  ?  On  the  contrary.  That  delightful  power  which  La 
Bruyere  points  to  —  “  le  ridicule  qui  est  quelque  part,  il  faut 
l’y  voir,  l’en  tirer  avec  grace  et  d’une  maniere  qui  plaise  et 
qui  instruise  ”  —  depends  on  a  discrimination  only  compatible 
with  the  varied  sensibilities  which  give  sympathetic  insight, 
and  with  the  justice  of  perception  which  is  another  name  for 
grave  knowledge.  Such  a  result  is  no  more  to  be  expected 
from  faculties  on  the  strain  to  find  some  small  hook  by  which 
they  may  attach  the  lowest  incongruity  to  the  most  moment¬ 
ous  subject,  than  it  is  to  be  expected  of  a  sharper,  watching 
for  gulls  in  a  great  political  assemblage,  that  he  will  notice 
the  blundering  logic  of  partisan  speakers,  or  season  his  obser¬ 
vation  with  the  salt  of  historical  parallels.  But  after  all 
our  psychological  teaching,  and  in  the  midst  of  our  zeal  for 
education,  we  are  still,  most  of  us,  at  the  stage  of  believing 
that  mental  powers  and  habits  have  somehow,  not  perhaps  in 
the  general  statement  but  in  any  particular  case,  a  kind  of 
spiritual  glaze  against  conditions  which  we  are  continually 
applying  to  them.  We  soak  our  children  in  habits  of  con¬ 
tempt  and  exultant  gibing,  and  yet  are  confident  that,  as 
Clarissa  one  day  said  to  me,  “  We  can  always  teach  them  to 
be  reverent  in  the  right  place,  you  know.”  And  doubtless  if 
she  were  to  take  her  boys  to  see  a  burlesque  Socrates,  with 
swollen  legs,  dying  in  the  utterance  of  cockney  puns,  and 
were  to  hang  up  a  sketch  of  this  comic  scene  among  their 
bedroom  prints,  she  would  think  this  preparation  not  at  all 
to  the  prejudice  of  their  emotions  on  hearing  their  tutor  read 


DEBASING  THE  MORAL  CURRENCY. 


839 


that  narrative  of  the  “  Apology,”  which  has  been  consecrated 
Dy  the  reverent  gratitude  of  ages.  This  is  the  impoverishment 
that  threatens  our  posterity :  a  new  Famine,  a  meagre  fiend, 
with  lewd  grin  and  clumsy  hoof,  is  breathing  a  moral  mildew 
over  the  harvest  of  our  human  sentiments.  These  are  the 
most  delicate  elements  of  our  too  easily  perishable  civiliza¬ 
tion.  And  here  again  I  like  to  quote  a  French  testimony. 
Sainte-Beuve,  referring  to  a  time  of  insurrectionary  disturb¬ 
ance,  says :  “  B-ien  de  plus  prompt  a  baisser  que  la  civilisa^ 
tion  dans  les  crises  coinme  celle-ci ;  on  perd  en  trois  semaineg 
le  resultat  de  plusieurs  siecles.  La  civilisation,  la  vie,  est  une 
chose  apprise  et  invents,  qu’on  le  sache  bien :  1  Inventas  aut 
qui  vitam  excoluere  per  artes.’  J  es  homines  apres  quelques 
annees  de  paix  oublient  trope  cette  verite :  ils  arrivent  k 
croire  que  la  culture  est  chose  innee,  qu’elle  est  la  meme  chose 
que  la  nature.  La  sauvagerie  est  toujours  la  a  deux  pas,  et, 
des  qu’on  lache  pied,  elle  recommence.”  We  have  been 
severely  enough  taught  (if  we  were  willing  to  learn)  that  our 
civilization,  considered  as  a  splendid  material  fabric,  is  help¬ 
lessly  in  peril  without  the  spiritual  police  of  sentiments  or 
ideal  feelings.  And  it  is  this  invisible  police  which  we  had 
need,  as  a  community,  strive  to  maintain  in  efficient  force. 
How  if  a  dangerous  “  Swing  ”  were  sometimes  disguised  in  a 
versatile  entertainer,  devoted  to  the  amusement  of  mixed 
audiences  ?  And  I  confess  that  sometimes  when  I  see  a  cer¬ 
tain  style  of  a  young  lady,  who  checks  our  tender  admiration 
with  rouge  and  henna  and  all  the  blazonry  of  an  extravagant 
expenditure,  with  slang  and  bold  brusquerie  intended  to  sig¬ 
nify  her  emancipated  view  of  things,  and  the  cynical  mockery 
which  she  mistakes  for  penetration,  I  am  sorely  tempted  to 
hiss  out  “  Petroleuse  !  ”  It  is  a  small  matter  to  have  our  pal¬ 
aces  set  aflame,  compared  with  the  misery  of  having  our  sense 
of  a  noble  womanhood,  which  is  the  inspiration  of  a  purifying 
shame,  the  promise  of  life-penetrating  affection,  stained  and 
blotted  out  by  images  of  repulsiveness.  These  things  come 
not  of  higher  education  but  of  dull  ignorance,  fostered  into 
pertness  by  the  greedy  vulgarity  which  reverses  Peter’s  vision- 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


a40 

ary  lesson,  and  learns  to  call  all  things  common  and  unclean. 
It  comes  of  debasing  the  moral  currency. 

The  Tirynthians,  according  to  an  ancient  story  reported 
by  Athenseus,  becoming  conscious  that  their  trick  of  laughter 
at  everything  and  nothing  was  making  them  unfit  for  the  con¬ 
duct  of  serious  affairs,  appealed  to  the  Delphic  oracle  for 
some  means  of  cure.  The  god  prescribed  a  peculiar  form  of 
sacrifice,  which  would  be  effective  if  they  could  carry  it 
through  without  laughing.  They  did  their  best ;  but  the 
flimsy  joke  of  a  boy  upset  their  unaccustomed  gravity,  and  ir 
this  way  the  oracle  taught  them  that  even  the  gods  could  not 
prescribe  a  quick  cure  for  a  long  vitiation,  or  give  power  and 
dignity  to  a  people  who,  in  a  crisis  of  the  public  well-being, 
were  at  the  mercy  of  a  poor  jest. 


THE  WASP  CREDITED  WITH  THE 
HONEY-COMB. 


■'VT'O  man,  I  imagine,  would  object  more  strongly  than 
AM  Eupliorionto  communistic  principles  in  relation  to  ma¬ 
terial  property,  but  with  regard  to  property  in  ideas  he  enter¬ 
tains  such  principles  willingly,  and  is  disposed  to  treat  the 
distinction  between  Mine  and  Thine  in  original  authorship  as 
egoistic,  narrowing,  and  low.  I  have  known  him,  indeed, 
insist,  at  some  expense  of  erudition,  on  the  prior  right  of  an 
ancient,  a  mediaeval,  or  an  eighteenth-century  writer  to  be 
credited  with  a  view  or  statement  lately  advanced  with  some 
show  of  originality ;  and  this  championship  seems  to  imply 
a  nicety  of  conscience  toward  the  dead.  He  is  evidently 
unwilling  that  his  neighbors  should  get  more  credit  than  is 
due  to  them,  and  in  this  way  he  appears  to  recognize  a  cer¬ 
tain  proprietorship  even  in  spiritual  production.  But  per¬ 
haps  it  is  no  real  inconsistency  that,  with  regard  to  many 
instances  of  modern  origination,  it  is  his  habit  to  talk  with  a 
Gallic  largeness  and  refer  to  the  universe :  he  expatiates  on 
the  diffusive  nature  of  intellectual  products,  free  and  all- 
embracing  as  the  liberal  air ;  on  the  infinitesimal  smallness  of 
individual  origination  compared  with  the  massive  inheritance 
of  thought  on  which  every  new  generation  enters ;  on  that 
growing  preparation  for  every  epoch  through  which  certain 
ideas  or  modes  of  view  are  said  to  be  in  the  air,  and,  still 
more  metaphorically  speaking,  to  be  inevitably  absorbed,  so 
that  every  one  may  be  excused  for  not  knowing  how  he  got 
them.  Above  all,  he  insists  on  the  proper  subordination  of 
the  irritable  self,  the  mere  vehicle  of  an  idea  or  combination 


ux 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


which,  being  produced  by  the  sum  total  of  the  human  race, 
must  belong  to  that  multiple  entity,  from  the  accomplished 
lecturer  or  popularizer  who  transmits  it,  to  the  remotest  gen¬ 
eration  of  Fuegians  or  Hottentots,  however  indifferent  these 
may  be  to  the  superiority  of  their  right  above  that  of  the 
eminently  perishable  dyspeptic  author. 

One  may  admit  that  such  considerations  carry  a  profound 
truth,  to  be  even  religiously  contemplated,  and  yet  object  all 
the  more  to  the  mode  in  which  Euphorion  seems  to  apply 
them.  I  protest  against  the  use  of  these  majestic  conceptions 
to  do  the  dirty  work  of  unscrupulosity,  and  justify  the  non¬ 
payment  of  conscious  debts,  which  cannot  be  defined  or  en¬ 
forced  by  the  law  ;  especially  since  it  is  observable  that  the 
large  views  as  to  intellectual  property,  which  can  apparently 
reconcile  an  able  person  to  the  use  of  lately  borrowed  ideas 
as  if  they  were  his  own,  when  this  spoliation  is  favored  by 
the  public  darkness,  never  hinder  him  from  joining  in  the 
zealous  tribute  of  recognition  and  applause  to  those  warriors 
of  truth  whose  triumphal  arches  are  seen  in  the  public  ways, 
those  conquerors  whose  battles  and  “  annexations  ”  even  the 
carpenters  and  bricklayers  know  by  name.  Surely  the  ac¬ 
knowledgment  of  a  mental  debt  which  will  not  be  imme¬ 
diately  detected,  and  may  never  be  asserted,  is  a  case  to 
which  the  traditional  susceptibility  to  “debts  of  honor” 
would  be  suitably  transferred.  There  is  no  massive  public 
opinion  that  can  be  expected  to  tell  on  these  relations  o” 
thinkers  and  investigators,  relations  to  be  thoroughly  undeis 
stood  and  felt  only  by  those  who  are  interested  in  the  life  of 
ideas  and  acquainted  with  their  history.  To  lay  false  claim 
to  an  invention  or  discovery  which  has  an  immediate  market 
value ;  to  vamp  up  a  professedly  new  book  of  reference  by 
stealing  from  the  pages  of  one  already  produced  at  the  cost 
of  much  labor  and  material ;  to  copy  somebody  else’s  poem 
and  send  the  manuscript  to  a  magazine,  or  hand  it  about 
among  friends  as  an  original  “  effusion ;  ”  to  deliver  an  ele¬ 
gant  extract  from  a  known  writer  as  a  piece  of  improvised 
eloquence  —  these  are  the  limits  within  which  the  dishonest 


THE  WASP  CREDITED  WITH  THE  IIONEY-COMB.  343 


pretence  of  originality  is  likely  to  get  hissed  or  hooted,  and 
bring  more  or  less  shame  on  the  culprit.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  understand  the  merit  of  a  performance,  or  even  to  spell 
with  any  comfortable  confidence,  in  order  to  perceive  at  once 
that  such  pretences  are  not  respectable.  But  the  difference 
between  these  vulgar  frauds  —  these  devices  of  ridiculous  jays, 
whose  ill-secured  plumes  are  seen  falling  off  them  as  they 
run  —  and  the  quiet  appropriation  of  other  people’s  philosophic 
or  scientific  ideas,  can  hardly  be  held  to  lie  in  their  moral 
quality,  unless  we  take  impunity  as  our  criterion.  The 
pitiable  jays  had  no  presumption  in  their  favor,  and  foolishly 
fronted  an  alert  incredulity ;  but  Euphorion,  the  accomplished 
theorist,  has  an  audience  who  expect  much  of  him,  and  take 
it  as  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  that  every  unusual 
view  which  he  presents  anonymously  should  be  due  solely  to 
his  ingenuity.  His  borrowings  are  no  incongruous  feathers, 
awkwardly  stuck  on ;  they  have  an  appropriateness  which 
makes  them  seem  an  answer  to  anticipation,  like  the  return 
phrases  of  a  melody.  Certainly  one  cannot  help  the  ignorant 
conclusions  of  polite  society ;  and  there  are,  perhaps,  fashion¬ 
able  persons  who,  if  a  speaker  has  occasion  to  explain  what 
the  occiput  is,  will  consider  that  he  has  lately  discovered  that 
curiously  named  portion  of  the  animal  frame.  One  cannot 
give  a  genealogical  introduction  to  every  long-stored  item  of 
fact  or  conjecture  that  may  happen  to  be  a  revelation  for  the 
large  class  of  persons  who  are  understood  to  judge  soundly 
on  a  small  basis  of  knowledge ;  but  Euphorion  would  be  very 
sorry  to  have  it  supposed  that  he  is  unacquainted  with  the 
history  of  ideas,  and  sometimes  carries  even  into  minutiae 
the  evidence  of  his  exact  registration  of  names  in  connection 
with  quotable  phrases  or  suggestions.  I  can  therefore  only 
explain  the  apparent  infirmity  of  his  memory  in  cases  of 
larger  “  conveyance  ”  by  supposing  that  he  is  accustomed,  by 
the  very  association  of  largeness,  to  range  them  at  once  under 
those  grand  laws  of  the  universe  in  the  light  of  which  Mine 
and  Thine  disappear  and  are  resolved  into  Everybody’s  or 
Nobody’s  5  and  one  man’s  particular  obligations  to  another 


344 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


melt  untraceably  into  the  obligations  of  the  earth  to  the  solar 
system  in  general. 

Euphorion  himself,  if  a  particular  omission  of  acknowl¬ 
edgment  were  brought  home  to  him,  would  probably  take  a 
narrower  ground  of  explanation.  It  was  a  lapse  of  memory ; 
or  it  did  not  occur  to  him  as  necessary  in  this  case  to  men¬ 
tion  a  name,  the  source  being  well  known ;  or  (since  this 
seems  usually  to  act  as  a  strong  reason  for  mention)  he  rather 
abstained  from  adducing  the  name  because  it  might  injure 
the  excellent  matter  advanced,  just  as  an  obscure  trade-mark 
casts  discredit  on  a  good  commodity,  and  even  on  the  retailer 
who  has  furnished  himself  from  a  quarter  not  likely  to  be  es¬ 
teemed  firstrate.  No  doubt  this  last  is  a  genuine  and  fre¬ 
quent  reason  for  the  non-acknowledgment  of  indebtedness  to 
what  one  may  call  impersonal  as  well  as  personal  sources : 
even  an  American  editor  of  school  classics,  whose  own  Eng¬ 
lish  could  not  pass  for  more  than  a  syntactical  shoddy  of  the 
cheapest  sort,  felt  it  unfavorable  to  his  reputation  for  sound 
learning  that  he  should  be  obliged  to  the  “  Penny  Cyclopaedia,” 
and  disguised  his  references  to  it  under  contractions  in  which 
Us.  Knowl.  took  the  place  of  the  low  word  Penny.  Works  of 
this  convenient  stamp,  easily  obtained  and  well  nourished 
with  matter,  are  felt  to  be  like  rich  but  unfashionable  re¬ 
lations,  who  are  visited  and  received  in  privacy,  and  whose 
capital  is  used  or  inherited  without  any  ostentatious  insist¬ 
ence  on  their  names  and  places  of  abode.  As  to  memory,  it 
is  known  that  this  frail  faculty  naturally  lets  drop  the  facts 
which  are  less  flattering  to  our  self-love  —  when  it  does  not 
retain  them  carefully  as  subjects  not  to  be  approached,  marshy 
spots  with  a  warning  flag  over  them.  But  it  is  always  in¬ 
teresting  to  bring  forward  eminent  names,  such  as  Patricius 
or  Scaliger,  Euler  or  Lagrange,  Bopp  or  Humboldt.  To 
know  exactly  what  has  been  drawn  from  them  is  erudition, 
and  heightens  our  own  influence,  which  seems  advantageous 
to  mankind ;  whereas  to  cite  an  author  whose  ideas  may  pass 
as  higher  currency  under  our  own  signature,  can  have  no  ob¬ 
ject  except  the  contradictory  one  of  throwing  the  illumination 


THE  WASP  CREDITED  WITH  THE  HONEY-COMB.  345 


over  his  figure,  when  it  is  important  to  be  seen  one’s  self. 
All  these  reasons  must  weigh  considerably  with  those  spec¬ 
ulative  persons  who  have  to  ask  themselves  whether  or  not 
Universal  Utilitarianism  requires  that  in  the  particular  in¬ 
stance  before  them  they  should  injure  a  man  who  has  been  of 
service  to  them,  and  rob  a  fellow-workman  of  the  credit 
which  is  due  to  him. 

After  all,  however,  it  must  be  admitted  that  hardly  any 
accusation  is  more  difficult  to  prove,  and  more  liable  to  be 
false,  than  that  of  a  plagiarism  which  is  the  conscious  theft 
of  ideas  and  deliberate  reproduction  of  them  as  original. 
The  arguments  on  the  side  of  acquittal  are  obvious  and 
strong  —  the  inevitable  coincidences  of  contemporary  think¬ 
ing,  and  our  continual  experience  of  finding  notions  turning 
up  in  our  minds  without  any  label  on  them  to  tell  us  whence 
they  came ;  so  that  if  we  are  in  the  habit  of  expecting  much 
from  our  own  capacity  we  accept  them  at  once  as  a  new 
inspiration.  Then,  in  relation  to  the  elder  authors,  there  is 
the  difficulty  first  of  learning  and  then  of  remembering 
exactly  what  has  been  wrought  into  the  backward  tapestry  of 
the  world’s  history,  together  with  the  fact  that  ideas  acquired 
long  ago  reappear  as  the  sequence  of  an  awakened  interest  or 
a  line  of  inquiry  which  is  really  new  in  us ;  whence  it  is  con¬ 
ceivable  that  if  we  were  ancients  some  of  us  might  be  offering 
grateful  hecatombs  by  mistake,  and  proving  our  honesty  in  a 
ruinously  expensive  manner.  On  the  other  hand,  the  evi¬ 
dence  on  which  plagiarism  is  concluded  is  often  of  a  kind 
which,  though  much  trusted  in  questions  of  erudition  and 
historical  criticism,  is  apt  to  lead  us  injuriously  astray  in  our 
daily  judgments,  especially  of  the  resentful,  condemnatory 
sort.  How  Pythagoras  came  by  his  ideas,  whether  St.  Paul 
was  acquainted  with  all  the  Greek  poets,  what  Tacitus  must 
have  known  by  hearsay  and  systematically  ignored,  are  points 
m  which  a  false  persuasion  of  knowledge  is  less  damaging  to 
justice  and  charity  than  an  erroneous  confidence,  supported 
by  reasoning  fundamentally  similar,  of  my  neighbor’s  blame¬ 
worthy  behavior  in  a  case  where  I  am  personally  concerned 


346 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


No  premises  require  closer  scrutiny  than  those  which  lead  to 
the  constantly  echoed  conclusion,  “  He  must  have  known,”  or 
“  He  must  have  read.”  I  marvel  that  this  facility  of  belief 
on  the  side  of  knowledge  can  subsist  under  the  daily  demon¬ 
stration  that  the  easiest  of  all  things  to  the  human  mind  is 
not  to  know  and  not  to  read.  To  praise,  to  blame,  to  shout, 
grin,  or  hiss,  where  others  shout,  grin,  or  hiss  —  these  are 
native  tendencies ;  but  to  know  and  to  read  are  artificial,  hard 
accomplishments,  concerning  which  the  only  safe  supposition 
is,  that  as  little  of  them  has  been  done  as  the  case  admits. 
An  author,  keenly  conscious  of  having  written,  can  hardly 
help  imagining  his  condition  of  lively  interest  to  be  shared 
by  others  ;  just  as  we  are  all  apt  to  suppose  that  the  chill  or 
heat  we  are  conscious  of  must  be  general,  or  even  to  think 
that  our  sons  and  daughters,  our  pet  schemes,  and  our 
quarrelling  correspondence,  are  themes  to  which  intelligent 
persons  will  listen  long  without  weariness.  But  if  the  ardent 
author  happen  to  be  alive  to  practical  teaching,  he  will  soon 
learn  to  divide  the  larger  part  of  the  enlightened  public  into 
those  who  have  not  read  him,  and  think  it  necessary  to  tell 
him  so  when  they  meet  him  in  polite  society,  and  those  who 
have  equally  abstained  from  reading  him,  but  wish  to  con¬ 
ceal  this  negation,  and  speak  of  his  “  incomparable  works  ” 
with  that  trust  in  testimony  which  always  has  its  cheering 
Bide. 

Hence  it  is  worse  than  foolish  to  entertain  silent  suspi¬ 
cions  of  plagiarism,  still  more  to  give  them  voice,  when  they 
are  founded  on  a  construction  of  probabilities  which  a  little 
more  attention  to  every-day  occurrences,  as  a  guide  in  reason- 
ing,  would  show  us  to  be  really  worthless,  considered  as  proof. 
The  length  to  which  one  man’s  memory  can  go  in  letting  drop 
associations  that  are  vital  to  another  can  hardly  find  a  limit. 
It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  a  person  desirous  to  make  an 
agreeable  impression  on  you  would  deliberately  choose  to 
insist  to  you,  with  some  rhetorical  sharpness,  on  an  argument 
Thich  you  were  the  first  to  elaborate  in  public ;  yet  any  who 
listens  may  overhear  such  instances  of  obliviousness.  You 


THE  WASP  CREDITED  WITH  THE  HONEY-COMB.  347 


naturally  remember  your  peculiar  connection  with  your 
acquaintance’s  judicious  views ;  but  why  should  he  ?  Your 
fatherhood,  which  is  an  intense  feeling  to  you,  is  only  an 
additional  fact  of  meagre  interest  for  him  to  remember ;  and 
a  sense  of  obligation  to  the  particular  living  fellow-struggler 
who  has  helped  us  in  our  thinking,  is  not  yet  a  form  of  mem¬ 
ory  the  want  of  which  is  felt  to  be  disgraceful  or  derogatory, 
unless  it  is  taken  to  be  a  want  of  polite  instruction,  or  causes 
the  missing  of  a  cockade  on  a  day  of  celebration.  In  our 
suspicions  of  plagiarism  we  must  recognize,  as  the  first 
weighty  probability,  that  what  we,  who  feel  injured,  remember 
best  is  precisely  what  is  least  likely  to  enter  lastingly  into  the 
memory  of  our  neighbors.  But  it  is  fair  to  maintain  that  the 
neighbor  who  borrows  your  property,  loses  it  for  awhile,  and 
when  it  turns  up  again  forgets  your  connection  with  it  and 
counts  it  his  own,  shows  himself  so  much  the  feebler  in 
grasp  and  rectitude  of  mind.  Some  absent  persons  cannot 
remember  the  state  of  wear  in  their  own  hats  and  umbrellas, 
and  have  no  mental  check  to  tell  them  that  they  have  car¬ 
ried  home  a  fellow-visitor’s  more  recent  purchase.  They  may 
be  excellent  householders,  far  removed  from  the  suspicion  of 
low  devices,  but  one  wishes  them  a  more  correct  perception, 
and  a  more  wary  sense  that  a  neighbor’s  umbrella  may  be 
newer  than  their  own. 

True,  some  persons  are  so  constituted  that  the  very  excel¬ 
lence  of  an  idea  seems  to  them  a  convincing  reason  that  it 
must  be,  if  not  solely,  yet  especially  theirs.  It  fits  in  so 
beautifully  with  their  general  wisdom,  it  lies  implicitly  in  so 
many  of  their  manifested  opinions,  that,  if  they  have  not  yet 
expressed  it  (because  of  preoccupation),  it  is  clearly  a  part  of 
their  indigenous  produce,  and  is  proved  by  their  immediate 
eloquent  promulgation  of  it  to  belong  more  naturally  and 
appropriately  to  them  than  to  the  person  who  seemed  first  to 
have  alighted  on  it,  and  who  sinks  in  their  all-originating 
consciousness  to  that  low  kind  of  entity,  a  second  cause. 
This  is  not  lunacy,  or  pretence,  but  a  genuine  state  of  mind 
very  effective  in  practice,  and  often  carrying  the  public  with 


348 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


it,  so  that  the  poor  Columbus  is  found  to  be  a  very  faulty 
adventurer,  and  the  continent  is  named  after  Amerigo. 
Lighter  examples  of  this  instinctive  appropriation  are  con¬ 
stantly  met  with  among  brilliant  talkers.  Aquila  is  too 
agreeable  and  amusing  for  any  one,  who  is  not  himself  bent 
on  display,  to  be  angry  at  his  conversational  rapine  —  his 
habit  of  darting  down  on  every  morsel  of  booty  that  other 
birds  may  hold  in  their  beaks,  with  an  innocent  air,  as  if  it 
were  all  intended  for  his  use,  and  honestly  counted  on  by 
him  as  a  tribute  in  kind.  Hardly  any  man,  I  imagine,  can 
have  had  less  trouble  in  gathering  a  showy  stock  of  informa¬ 
tion  than  Aquila.  On  close  inquiry  you  would  probably  find 
that  he  had  not  read  one  epoch-making  book  of  modern 
times,  for  he  has  a  career  which  obliges  him  to  much  cor¬ 
respondence  and  other  official  work,  and  he  is  too  fond  of 
being  in  company  to  spend  his  leisure  moments  in  study; 
but  to  his  quick  eye,  ear,  and  tongue,  a  few  predatory 
excursions  in  conversation,  where  there  are  instructed  persons, 
gradually  furnish  surprisingly  clever  modes  of  statement  and 
allusion  on  the  dominant  topic.  When  he  first  adopts  a 
subject  he  necessarily  falls  into  mistakes,  and  it  is  interesting 
to  watch  his  gradual  progress,  into  fuller  information  and 
better  nourished  irony,  without  his  ever  needing  to  admit 
that  he  has  made  a  blunder  or  to  appear  conscious  of  correc¬ 
tion.  Suppose,  for  example,  he  had  incautiously  founded 
some  ingenious  remarks  on  a  hasty  reckoning  that  nine 
thirteens  made  a  hundred  and  two,  and  the  insignificant 
Bantam,  hitherto  silent,  seemed  to  spoil  the  flow  of  ideas  by 
stating  that  the  product  could  not  be  taken  as  less  than  a 
hundred  and  seventeen.  Aquila  would  glide  on  in  the  most 
graceful  manner,  from  a  repetition  of  his  previous  remark  to 
the  continuation  —  “All  this  is  on  the  supposition  that  a 
hundred  and  two  were  all  that  could  be  got  out  of  nine  thir¬ 
teens,  but  as  all  the  world  knows  that  nine  thirteens  will 
yield,1 ”  etc.  —  proceeding  straightway  into  a  new  train  of 
ingenious  consequences,  and  causing  Bantam  to  be  regarded 
by  all  present  as  one  of  those  slow  persons  who  take  irony 


THE  WASP  CREDITED  WITH  THE  HONEY-COMB.  349 


for  ignorance,  and  who  would  warn  the  weasel  to  keep  awake. 
How  should  a  small-eyed,  feebly  crowing  mortal  like  him  be 
quicker  in  arithmetic  than  the  keen-faced,  forcible  Aquila,  in 
whom  universal  knowledge  is  easily  credible  ?  Looked  into 
closely,  the  conclusion,  from  a  man’s  profile,  voice,  and  fluency, 
to  his  certainty  in  multiplication  beyond  the  twelves,  seems 
to  show  a  confused  notion  of  the  way  in  which  very  common 
things  are  connected;  but  it  is  on  such  false  correlations 
that  men  found  half  their  inferences  about  each  other,  and 
high  places  of  trust  may  sometimes  be  held  on  no  better 
foundation. 

It  is  a  commonplace  that  words,  writings,  measures,  and 
performances  in  general,  have  qualities  assigned  them,  not 
by  a  direct  judgment  on  the  performances  themselves,  but  by 
a  presumption  of  what  they  are  likely  to  be,  considering  who 
is  the  performer.  We  all  notice  in  our  neighbors  this  refer¬ 
ence  to  names  as  guides  in  criticism,  and  all  furnish  illustra¬ 
tions  of  it  in  our  own  practice;  for  check  ourselves  as  we 
will,  the  first  impression  from  any  sort  of  work  must  depend 
on  a  previous  attitude  of  mind,  and  this  will  constantly  be 
determined  by  the  influences  of  a  name.  But  that  our  prior 
confidence  or  want  of  confidence  in  given  names  is  made  up 
of  judgments  just  as  hollow  as  the  consequent  praise  or  blame 
they  are  taken  to  warrant,  is  less  commonly  perceived,  though 
there  is  a  conspicuous  indication  of  it  in  the  surprise  or 
disappointment  often  manifested  in  the  disclosure  of  an 
authorship  about  which  everybody  has  been  making  wrong 
guesses.  No  doubt  if  it  had  been  discovered  who  wrote  the 
“Vestiges,”  many  an  ingenious  structure  of  probabilities 
would  have  been  spoiled,  and  some  disgust  might  have  been 
felt  for  a  real  author  who  made  comparatively  so  shabby  an 
appearance  of  likelihood.  It  is  this  foolish  trust  in  pre¬ 
possessions,  founded  on  spurious  evidence,  which  makes  a 
medium  of  encouragement  for  those  who,  happening  to  have 
the  ear  of  the  public,  give  other  people’s  ideas  the  advantage 
of  appearing  under  their  own  well-received  name ;  while  any 
remonstrance  from  the  real  producer  becomes  an  unwelcome 


350 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


disturbance  of  complacency  with  each  person  who  has  paid 
complimentary  tributes  in  the  wrong  place. 

Hardly  any  kind  of  false  reasoning  is  more  ludicrous  than 
this  on  the  probabilities  of  origination.  It  would  be  amusing 
to  catechise  the  guessers  as  to  their  exact  reasons  for  thinking 
their  guess  “likely;”  why  Hoopoe  of  John’s  has  fixed  on 
Toucan  of  Magdalen ;  why  Shrike  attributes  its  peculiar  style 
to  Buzzard,  who  has  not  hitherto  been  known  as  a  writer; 
why  the  fair  Columbia  thinks  it  must  belong  to  the  Reverend 
Merula;  and  why  they  are  all  alike  disturbed  in  their  pre¬ 
vious  judgment  of  its  value  by  finding  that  it  really  came 
from  Skunk,  whom  they  had  either  not  thought  of  at  all,  or 
thought  of  as  belonging  to  a  species  excluded  by  the  nature 
of  the  case.  Clearly  they  were  all  wrong  in  their  notion  of 
the  specific  conditions,  which  lay  un  .xpectedly  in  the  small 
Skunk,  and  in  him  alone  —  in  spite  of  his  education  nobody 
knows  where,  in  spite  of  somebody’s  knowing  his  uncles  and 
cousins,  and  in  spite  of  nobody’s  knowing  that  he  was  clev 
erer  than  they  thought  him. 

Such  guesses  remind  one  of  a  fabulist’s  imaginary  council 
of  animals  assembled  to  consider  what  sort  of  creature  had 
constructed  a  honey-comb,  found  and  much  tasted  by  Bruin 
and  other  epicures.  The  speakers  all  started  from  the  prob¬ 
ability  that  the  maker  was  a  bird,  because  this  was  the 
quarter  from  which  a  wondrous  nest  might  be  expected ;  for 
the  animals  at  that  time,  knowing  little  of  their  own  history, 
would  have  rejected  as  inconceivable  the  notion  that  the  nest 
could  be  made  by  a  fish ;  and  as  to  the  insects,  they  were  not 
willingly  received  in  society  and  their  ways  were  little 
known.  Several  complimentary  presumptions  were  expressed 
that  the  honey-comb  was  due  to  one  or  the  other  admired 
and  popular  bird,  and  there  was  much  fluttering  on  the  part 
of  the  Nightingale  and  Swallow,  neither  of  whom  gave  a 
positive  denial,  their  confusion  perhaps  extending  to  their 
sense  of  identity ;  but  the  Owl  hissed  at  this  folly,  arguing 
from  his  particular  knowledge  that  the  animal  which  pro¬ 
duced  honey  must  be  the  Musk-rat,  the  wondrous  nature  of 


THE  WASP  CREDITED  WITH  THE  HONEY-COMB.  851 


whose  secretions  required  no  proof ;  and,  in  the  powerful 
logical  procedure  of  the  Owl,  from  musk  to  honey  was  but  a 
step.  Some  disturbance  arose  hereupon,  for  the  Musk-rat 
began  to  make  himself  obtrusive,  believing  in  the  Owl’s 
opinion  of  his  powers,  and  feeling  that  he  could  have  pro¬ 
duced  the  honey  if  he  had  thought  of  it,  until  an  experimental 
Butcher-bird  proposed  to  anatomize  him  as  a  help  to  decision 
The  hubbub  increased,  the  opponents  of  the  Musk-rat  in¬ 
quiring  who  his  ancestors  were,  until  a  diversion  was  created 
by  an  able  discourse  of  the  Macaw  on  structures  generally, 
which  he  classified  so  as  to  include  the  honey -comb,  entering 
into  so  much  admirable  exposition  that  there  was  a  prevalent 
sense  of  the  honey-comb  having  probably  been  produced  by 
one  who  understood  it  so  well.  But  Bruin,  who  had  probably 
eaten  too  much  to  listen  with  edification,  grumbled,  in  his 
low  kind  of  language,  that  “  Fine  words  butter  no  parsnips  ;  ” 
by  which  he  meant  to  say  that  there  was  no  new  honey 
forthcoming. 

Perhaps  the  audience  generally  was  beginning  to  tire, 
when  the  Fox  entered  with  his  snout  dreadfully  swollen,  and 
reported  that  the  beneficent  originator  in  question  was  the 
Wasp,  which  he  had  found  much  smeared  with  undoubted 
honey,  having  applied  his  nose  to  it;  whence,  indeed,  the 
able  insect,  perhaps  justifiably  irritated  at  what  might  seem 
a  sign  of  scepticism,  had  stung  him  with  some  severity,  an 
infliction  Beynard  could  hardly  regret,  since  the  swelling  of 
a  snout  normally  so  delicate  would  corroborate  his  statement, 
and  satisfy  the  assembly  that  he  had  really  found  the  honey- 
creating  genius. 

The  Fox’s  admitted  acuteness,  combined  with  the  visible 
swelling,  were  taken  as  undeniable  evidence,  and  the  revela¬ 
tion  undoubtedly  met  a  general  desire  for  information  on  a 
point  of  interest.  Nevertheless,  there  was  a  murmur  the 
reverse  of  delighted,  and  the  feelings  of  some  eminent 
animals  were  too  strong  for  them  •  the  Orang-outang’s  jaw 
dropped  so  as  seriously  to  impair  the  vigor  of  his  expression, 
the  edifying  Pelican  screamed  and  flapped  her  wings,  the 


352 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


Owl  hissed  again,  the  Macaw  became  loudly  incoherent,  and 
the  Gibbon  gave  his  hysterical  laugh ;  while  the  Hyena,  after 
indulging  in  a  more  splenetic  guffaw,  agitated  the  question 
whether  it  would  not  be  better  to  hush  up  the  whole  affair, 
instead  of  giving  public  recognition  to  an  insect  whose  prod¬ 
uce,  it  was  now  plain,  had  been  much  over-estimated.  But 
this  narrow-spirited  motion  was  negatived  by  the  sweet¬ 
toothed  majority.  A  complimentary  deputation  to  the  Wasp 
was  resolved  on,  and  there  was  a  confident  hope  that  this 
diplomatic  measure  would  tell  on  the  production  oi  honey. 


“SO  YOUNG!” 


GANYMEDE  was  once  a  girlishly  handsome,  precocious 
youth.  That  one  cannot,  for  any  considerable  number 
of  years,  go  on  being  youthful,  girlishly  handsome,  and  pre¬ 
cocious,  seems,  on  consideration,  to  be  a  statement  as  worthy 
of  credit  as  the  famous  syllogistic  conclusion,  “  Socrates  was 
mortal.”  But  many  circumstances  have  conspired  to  keep  up 
in  Ganymede  the  illusion  that  he  is  surprisingly  young.  He 
was  the  last  born  of  his  family,  and  from  his  earliest  memory 
was  accustomed  to  be  commended  as  such  to  the  care  of  his 
elder  brothers  and  sisters  ;  he  heard  his  mother  speak  of  him 
as  her  youngest  darling  with  a  loving  pathos  in  her  tone, 
which  naturally  suffused  his  own  view  of  himself,  and  gave 
him  the  habitual  consciousness  of  being  at  once  very  young 
and  very  interesting.  Then,  the  disclosure  of  his  tender 
years  was  a  constant  matter  of  astonishment  to  strangers 
who  had  had  proof  of  his  precocious  talents ;  and  the  aston¬ 
ishment  extended  to  what  is  called  the  world  at  large,  when 


he  produced  “A  Comparative  Estimate  of  European  Nations” 
before  he  was  well  out  of  his  teens.  All  comers,  on  a  first 
interview,  told  him  that  he  was  marvellously  young,  and 
some  repeated  the  statement  each  time  they  saw  him ;  all 
critics  who  wrote  about  him  called  attention  to  the  same 
ground  for  wonder ;  his  deficiencies  and  excesses  were  alike 
to  be  accounted  for  by  the  flattering  fact  of  his  youth,  and 
his  youth  was  the  golden  background  which  set  off  his  many- 
hued  endowments.  Here  was  already  enough  to  establish  a 
strong  association  between  his  sense  of  identity  and  his  sense 
of  being  unusually  young.  But  after  this  he  devised  and 

2S 


von.  ix. 


354 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


founded  an  ingenious  organization  for  consolidating  the  liter¬ 
ary  interests  of  all  the  four  continents  (subsequently  includ¬ 
ing  Australasia  and  Polynesia),  he  himself  presiding  in  the 
central  office,  which  thus  became  a  new  theatre  for  the  con¬ 
stantly  repeated  situation  of  an  astonished  stranger  in  the 
presence  of  a  boldly  scheming  administrator  found  to  be  re¬ 
markably  young.  If  we  imagine  with  due  charity  the  effect 
on  Ganymede,  we  shall  think  it  greatly  to  his  credit  that  he 
continued  to  feel  the  necessity  of  being  something  more  than 
young,  and  did  not  sink  by  rapid  degrees  into  a  parallel  of 
that  melancholy  object,  a  superannuated  youthful  phenome¬ 
non.  Happily  he  had  enough  of  valid,  active  faculty  to  save 
him  from  that  tragic  fate.  He  had  not  exhausted  his  foun¬ 
tain  of  eloquent  opinion  in  his  “  Comparative  Estimate,”  so 
as  to  feel  himself  like  some  other  juvenile  celebrities,  the  sad 
survivor  of  his  own  manifest  destiny,  or  like  one  who  has 
risen  too  early  in  the  morning,  and  finds  all  the  solid  day 
turned  into  a  fatigued  afternoon.  He  has  continued  to  be 
productive  both  of  schemes  and  writings,  being  perhaps 
helped  by  the  fact  that  his  “  Comparative  Estimate  ”  did  not 
greatly  affect  the  currents  of  European  thought,  and  left  him 
with  the  stimulating  hope  that  he  had  not  done  his  best,  but 
might  yet  produce  what  would  make  his  youth  more  surpris¬ 
ing  than  ever. 

I  saw  something  of  him  through  his  Antinoiis  period,  the 
time  of  rich  chestnut  locks,  parted  not  by  a  visible  white  line, 
but  by  a  shadowed  furrow  from  which  they  fell  in  massive 
ripples  to  right  and  left.  In  these  slim  days  he  looked  the 
younger  for  being  rather  below  the  middle  size  ;  and  though 
at  last  one  perceived  him  contracting  an  indefinable  air  of 
self-consciousness,  a  slight  exaggeration  of  the  facial  move¬ 
ments,  the  attitudes,  the  little  tricks,  and  the  romance  in 
shirt  collars,  which  must  be  expected  from  one  who,  in  spite 
of  his  knowledge,  was  so  exceedingly  young,  it  was  impossi¬ 
ble  to  say  that  he  was  making  any  great  mistake  about  him¬ 
self.  He  was  only  undergoing  one  form  of  a  common  moral 
disease  j  being  strongly  mirrored  for  himself  in  the  remark 


“SO  YOUNG!” 


355 


of  others,  he  was  getting  to  see  his  real  characteristics  as  a 
dramatic  part,  a  type  to  which  his  doings  were  always  in  cor¬ 
respondence.  Owing  to  my  absence  on  travel,  and  to  other 
causes,  I  had  lost  sight  of  him  for  several  years ;  but  such  a 
separation,  between  two  who  have  not  missed  each  other,  seems 
in  this  busy  century  only  a  pleasant  reason,  when  they  hap¬ 
pen  to  meet  again  in  some  old  accustomed  haunt,  for  the  one 
who  has  stayed  at  home  to  be  more  communicative  about 
himself  than  he  can  well  be  to  those  who  have  all  along  been 
in  his  neighborhood.  He  had  married  in  the  interval,  and  as 
if  to  keep  up  his  surprising  youthfulness  in  all  relations,  he 
had  taken  a  wife  considerably  older  than  himself.  It  would 
probably  have  seemed  to  him  a  disturbing  inversion  of  the 
natural  order  that  any  one  very  near  to  him  should  have  been 
younger  than  he,  except  his  own  children,  who,  however 
young,  would  not  necessarily  hinder  the  normal  surprise  at 
the  youthfulness  of  their  father.  And  if  my  glance  had  re¬ 
vealed  my  impression  on  first  seeing  him  again,  he  might 
have  received  a  rather  disagreeable  shock,  which  was  far 
from  my  intention.  My  mind,  having  retained  a  very  exact 
image  of  his  former  appearance,  took  note  of  unmistakable 
changes,  such  as  a  painter  would  certainly  not  have  made  by 
way  of  flattering  his  subject.  He  had  lost  his  slimness,  and 
that  curved  solidity,  which  might  have  adorned  a  taller  man, 
was  a  rather  sarcastic  threat  to  his  short  figure.  The  English 
branch  of  the  Teutonic  race  does  not  produce  many  fat  youths, 
and  I  have  even  heard  an  American  lady  say,  that  she  was 
much  “disappointed”  at  the  moderate  number  and  size  of 
our  fat  men,  considering  their  reputation  in  the  United 
States ;  hence  a  stranger  would  now  have  been  apt  to  remark 
that  Ganymede  was  unusually  plump  for  a  distinguished 
writer,  rather  than  unusually  young.  But  how  was  he  to 
know  this  ?  Many  long-standing  prepossessions  are  as  hard 
to  be  corrected  as  a  long-standing  mispronunciation,  against 
which  the  direct  experience  of  eye  and  ear  is  often  power¬ 
less.  And  I  could  perceive  that  Ganymede’s  imvrought  sense 
of  his  surprising  youthfulness  had  been  stronger  than  the 


356 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


superficial  reckoning  of  liis  years  and  the  merely  optical 
phenomena  of  the  looking-glass.  He  now  held  a  post  under 
government,  and  not  only  saw,  like  most  subordinate  func¬ 
tionaries,  how  ill  everything  was  managed,  but  also  what 
were  the  changes  that  a  high  constructive  ability  would  dic¬ 
tate  ;  and  in  mentioning  to  me  his  own  speeches,  and  other 
efforts  toward  propagating  reformatory  views  in  his  depart¬ 
ment,  he  concluded  by  changing  his  tone  to  a  sentimental 
head-voice  and  saying :  — 

“But  I  am  so  young,  people  object  to  any  prominence  on 
my  part;  I  can  only  get  myself  heard  anonymously,  and 
when  some  attention  has  been  drawn  the  name  is  sure  to 
creep  out.  The  writer  is  known  to  be  young,  and  things  are 
none  the  forwarder.’’ 

“Well,”  said  I,  “youth  seems  the  only  drawback  that  is 
sure  to  diminish.  You  and  I  have  seven  years  less  of  it  than 
when  we  last  met.” 

“  Ah,”  returned  Ganymede,  as  lightly  as  possible,  at  the 
same  time  casting  an  observant  glance  over  me,  as  if  he  were 
marking  the  effect  of  seven  years  on  a  person  who  had  prob¬ 
ably  begun  life  with  an  old  look,  and  even  as  an  infant  had 
given  his  countenance  to  that  significant  doctrine,  the  trans¬ 
migration  of  ancient  souls  into  modern  bodies. 

I  left  him  on  that  occasion  without  any  melancholy  fore¬ 
cast  that  his  illusion  would  be  suddenly  or  painfully  broken 
up.  I  saw  that  he  was  well  victualled  and  defended  against 
a  ten  years’  siege  from  ruthless  facts ;  and  in  the  course  of 
time  observation  convinced  me  that  his  resistance  received 
considerable  aid  from  without.  Each  of  his  written  produc¬ 
tions,  as  it  came  out,  was  still  commented  on  as  the  work  of 
a  very  young  man.  One  critic,  finding  that  he  wanted  so¬ 
lidity,  charitably  referred  to  his  youth  as  an  excuse.  An¬ 
other,  dazzled  by  his  brilliancy,  seemed  to  regard  his  youth 
as  so  wondrous  that  all  other  authors  appeared  decrepit  by 
comparison,  and  their  style  such  as  might  be  looked  for  from 
gentlemen  of  the  old  school.  Able  pens  (according  to  a  famil¬ 
iar  metaphor)  appeared  to  shake  their  heads  good-humoredly, 


“  SO  YOUNG  !•• 


357 


Implying  that  Ganymede’s  crudities  were  pardonable  in  one 
so  exceedingly  young.  Such  unanimity  amidst  diversity, 
which  a  distant  posterity  might  take  for  evidence  that  on  the 
point  of  age  at  least  there  could  have  been  no  mistake,  was 
not  really  more  difficult  to  account  for  than  the  prevalence  of 
cotton  in  our  fabrics.  Ganymede  had  been  first  introduced 
into  the  -writing  world  as  remarkably  young,  and  it  was  no 
exceptional  consequence  that  the  first  deposit  of  information 
about  him  held  its  ground  against  facts  which,  however  open 
to  observation,  were  not  necessarily  thought  of.  It  is  not  so 
easy,  with  our  rates  and  taxes  and  need  for  economy  in  all 
directions,  to  cast  away  an  epithet  or  remark  that  turns  up 
cheaply,  and  to  go  in  expensive  search  after  more  genuine 
substitutes.  There  is  high  Homeric  precedent  for  keeping 
East  hold  of  an  epithet  under  all  changes  of  circumstance,  and 
so  the  precocious  author  of  the  “  Comparative  Estimate” 
heard  the  echoes  repeating  “  Young  Ganymede,”  when  an 
illiterate  beholder  at  a  railway  station  would  have  given  him 
forty  years  at  least.  Besides,  important  elders,  sachems  of 
the  clubs  and  public  meetings,  had  a  genuine  opinion  of  him 
a,s  young  enough  to  be  checked  for  speech  on  subjects  which 
they  had  spoken  mistakenly  about  when  he  was  in  his  cradle ; 
and  then,  the  midway  parting  of  his  crisp  hair,  not  common 
among  English  committee-men,  formed  a  presumption  against 
the  ripeness  of  his  judgment  which  nothing  but  a  speedy 
baldness  could  have  removed. 

It  is  but  fair  to  mention  all  these  outward  confirmations 
of  Ganymede’s  illusion,  which  shows  no  signs  of  leaving 
him.  It  is  true  that  he  no  longer  hears  expressions  of  sur¬ 
prise  at  Ins  youthfulness,  on  a  first  introduction  to  an  aamin 
ing  reader ;  but  this  sort  of  external  evidence  has  become  an 
unnecessary  crutch  to  his  habitual  inward  persuasion.  ITis 
manners,  his  costume,  his  suppositions  of  the  impression  he 
makes  on  others,  have  all  their  former  correspondence  with 
the  dramatic  part  of  the  young  genius.  As  to  the  incongruity 
of  his  contour,  and  other  little  accidents  of  physique,  he  is 
probably  no  more  aware  that  they  will  affect  others  as  incon- 


358 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


gruities,  than  Armida  is  conscious  how  much  her  rouge  pro¬ 
vokes  our  notice  of  her  wrinkles,  and  causes  us  to  mention 
sarcastically  that  motherly  age  which  we  should  otherwise 
regard  with  affectionate  reverence. 

But  let  us  be  just  enough  to  admit  that  there  may  be  old- 
young  coxcombs  as  well  as  old-young  coquettes. 


HOW  WE  COME  TO  GIVE  OURSELVES  FALSE 
TESTIMONIALS,  AND  BELIEVE  IN  THEM. 


IT  is  my  way,  when  I  observe  any  instance  of  folly,  any 
queer  habit,  any  absurd  illusion,  straightway  to  look  for 
something  of  the  same  type  in  myself,  feeling  sure  that, 
amidst  all  differences,  there  will  be  a  certain  correspondence ; 
just  as  there  is  more  or  less  correspondence  m  the  natural 
history  even  of  continents  widely  apart,  and  of  islands  in 
opposite  zones.  No  doubt  men’s  minds  differ  in  what  we 
may  call  their  climate,  or  share  of  solar  energy,  and  a  feeling 
or  tendency  which  is  comparable  to  a  panther  in  one  may  have 
no  more  imposing  aspect  than  that  of  a  weasel  in  another : 
some  are  like  a  tropical  habitat,  in  which  the  very  ferns  cast 
a  mighty  shadow,  and  the  grasses  are  a  dry  ocean  in  which  a 
hunter  may  be  submerged ;  others  like  the  chilly  latitudes 
in  which  your  forest-tree,  fit  elsewhere  to  prop  a  mine,  is  a 
pretty  miniature  suitable  for  fancy  potting.  The  eccentric 
man  might  be  typified  by  the  Australian  fauna,  refuting  half 
our  judicious  assumptions  of  what  nature  allows.  Still, 
whether  fate  commanded  us  to  thatch  our  persons  among  the 
Eskimos  or  to  choose  the  latest  thing  in  tattooing  among  the 
Polynesian  isles,  our  precious  guide,  Comparison,  would  teach 
us  in  the  first  place  by  likeness,  and  our  clew  to  further 
knowledge  would  be  resemblance  to  what  we  already  know. 
Hence,  having  a  keen  interest  in  the  natural  history  of  my 
inward  self,  I  pursue  this  plan  I  have  mentioned,  of  using 
my  observation  as  a  clew  or  lantern  by  which  I  detect  small 
herbage  or  lurking  life ;  or  I  take  my  neighbor,  in  his  least 
becoming  tricks  or  efforts,  as  an  opportunity  for  luminous 


360 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


deduction  concerning  the  figure  the  human  genus  makes  in 
the  specimen  which  I  myself  furnish. 

Introspection  which  starts  with  the  purpose  of  finding  out 
one’s  own  absurdities  is  not  likely  to  be  very  mischievous, 
yet  of  course  it  is  not  free  from  dangers,  any  more  than 
breaming  is,  or  the  other  functions  that  keep  us  alive  and 
active.  To  judge  of  others  by  one’s  self  is,  in  its  most  inno¬ 
cent  meaning,  the  briefest  expression  for  our  only  method  of 
knowing  mankind  ;  yet,  we  perceive,  it  has  come  to  mean  in 
many  cases  either  the  vulgar  mistake  which  reduces  every 
man’s  value  to  the  very  low  figure  at  which  the  valuer  him¬ 
self  happens  to  stand,  or  else  the  amiable  illusion  of  the 
higher  nature  misled  by  a  too  generous  construction  of  the 
lower.  One  cannot  give  a  recipe  for  wise  judgment ;  it  re¬ 
sembles  appropriate  muscular  action,  which  is  attained  by 
the  myriad  lessons  in  nicety  of  balance  and  of  aim  that  only 
practice  can  give.  The  danger  of  the  inverse  procedure, 
judging  of  self  by  what  one  observes  in  others,  if  it  is  car¬ 
ried  on  with  much  impartiality  and  keenness  of  discernment, 
is  that  it  has  a  laming  effect,  enfeebling  the  energies  of  in¬ 
dignation  and  scorn,  which  are  the  proper  scourges  of  wrong¬ 
doing  and  meanness,  and  which  should  continually  feed  the 
wholesome  restraining  power  of  public  opinion.  I  respect 
the  horsewhip  when  applied  to  the  back  of  cruelty,  and  think 
that  he  who  applies  it  is  a  more  perfect  human  being  because 
his  outleap  of  indignation  is  not  checked  by  a  too  curious  re¬ 
flection  on  the  nature  of  guilt  —  a  more  perfect  human  being 
because  he  more  completely  incorporates  the  best  social  life 
of  the  race,  which  can  never  be  constituted  by  ideas  that  nul¬ 
lify  action.  This  is  the  essence  of  Dante’s  sentiment  (it  is 
painful  to  think  that  he  applies  it  very  cruelly)  — 

“  E  cortesia  fh,  lui  esser  villano  —  ” 1 

and  it  is  undeniable  that  a  too  intense  consciousness  of  one’s 
kinship  with  all  frailties  and  vices  undermines  the  active 
heroism  which  battles  against  wrong. 


1  Inferno,  xxxii.  150. 


FALSE  TESTIMONIALS. 


361 


But  certainly  nature  has  taken  care  that  this  danger  should 
not  at  present  be  very  threatening.  One  could  not  fairly  de¬ 
scribe  the  generality  of  one’s  neighbors  as  too  lucidly  aware 
of  manifesting  in  their  own  persons  the  weaknesses  which 
they  observe  in  the  rest  of  her  Majesty’s  subjects ;  on  the 
contrary,  a  hasty  conclusion  as  to  schemes  of  Providence 
might  lead  to  the  supposition  that  one  man  was  intended  to 
correct  another  by  being  most  intolerant  of  the  ugly  quality 
or  trick  which  he  himself  possesses.  Doubtless  philosophers 
will  be  able  to  explain  how  it  must  necessarily  be  so,  but 
pending  the  full  extension  of  the  a  ‘priori  method,  which  will 
show  that  only  blockheads  could  expect  anything  to  be  other¬ 
wise,  it  does  seem  surprising  that  Heloisa  should  be  dis¬ 
gusted  at  Laura’s  attempts  to  disguise  her  age  —  attempts 
which  she  recognizes  so  thoroughly  because  they  enter  into 
her  own  practice ;  that  Semper,,  who  often  responds  at  public 
dinners  and  proposes  resolutions  on  platforms,  though  he  has 
a  trying  gestation  of  every  speech  and  a  bad  time  for  himself 
and  others  at  every  delivery,  should  yet  remark  pitilessly  on 
the  folly  of  precisely  the  same  course  of  action  in  Ubique ; 
that  Aliquis,  who  lets  no  attack  on  himself  pass  unnoticed, 
and  for  every  handful  of  gravel  against  his  windows  sends  a 
stone  in  reply,  should  deplore  the  ill-advised  retorts  of  Quis- 
piam,  who  does  not  perceive  that  to  show  one’s  self  angry 
with  an  adversary  is  to  gratify  him.  To  be  unaware  of  our 
own  little  tricks  of  manner  or  our  own  mental  blemishes  and 
excesses  is  a  comprehensible  unconsciousness ;  the  puzzling 
fact  is  that  people  should  apparently  take  no  account  of  their 
deliberate  actions,  and  should  expect  them  to  be  equally  ig¬ 
nored  by  others.  It  is  an  inversion  of  the  accepted  order : 
there  it  is  the  phrases  that  are  official,  and  the  conduct  or  pri¬ 
vately  manifested  sentiment  that  is  taken  to  be  real ;  here  it 
seems  that  the  practice  is  taken  to  be  official  and  entirely 
nullified  by  the  verbal  representation  which  contradicts  it. 
The  thief  making  a  vow  to  Heaven  of  full  restitution  and 
whispering  some  reservations,  expecting  to  cheat  Omniscience 
by  an  “  aside,”  is  hardly  more  ludicrous  than  the  many  ladies 


362 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


and  gentlemen  who  have  more  belief,  and  expect  others  to 
have  it,  in  their  own  statement  about  their  habitual  doings 
than  in  the  contradictory  fact  which  is  patent  in  the  daylight. 
One  reason  of  the  absurdity  is  that  we  are  led  by  a  tradition 
about  ourselves,  so  that  long  after  a  man  has  practically  de¬ 
parted  from  a  rule  or  principle,  he  continues  innocently  to 
state  it  as  a  true  description  of  his  practice  —  just  as  he  has  a 
long  tradition  that  he  is  not  an  old  gentleman,  and  is  startled 
when  he  is  seventy  at  overhearing  himself  called  by  an  epi¬ 
thet  which  he  has  only  applied  to  others. 

“  A  person  with  your  tendency  of  constitution  should  take 
as  little  sugar  as  possible,”  said  Pilulus  to  Bovis,  somewhere 
in  the  darker  decades  of  this  century.  “  It  has  made  a  great 
difference  to  Avis  since  he  took  my  advice  in  that  matter ;  he 
used  to  consume  half  a  pound  a  day.” 

“  God  bless  me  !  ”  cries  Bovis.  “  I  take  very  little  sugar 
myself.” 

“Twenty-six  large  lumps  every  day  of  your  life,  Mr. 
Bovis,”  says  his  wife. 

“  No  such  thing  !  ”  exclaims  Bovis. 

“You  drop  them  into  your  tea,  coffee,  and  whiskey  your 
self,  my  dear,  and  I  count  them.” 

“  Nonsense !  ”  laughs  Bovis,  turning  to  Pilulus,  that  they 
may  exchange  a  glance  of  mutual  amusement  at  a  woman’s 
inaccuracy. 

But  she  happened  to  be  right.  Bovis  had  never  said  in¬ 
wardly  that  he  would  take  a  large  allowance  of  sugar,  and  he 
had  the  tradition  about  himself  that  he  was  a  man  of  the 
most  moderate  habits ;  hence,  with  this  conviction,  he  was 
naturally  disgusted  at  the  saccharine  excesses  of  Avis. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  this  facility  of  men  in  be¬ 
lieving  that  they  are  still  what  they  once  meant  to  be  —  this 
undisturbed  appropriation  of  a  traditional  character  which  is 
often  but  a  melancholy  relic  of  early  resolutions,  like  the 
worn  and  soiled  testimonial  to  soberness  and  honesty  carried 
in  the  pocket  of  a  tippler  whom  the  need  of  a  dram  has  driven 
into  peculation  —  may  sometimes  diminish  the  turpitude  of 


FALSE  TESTIMONIALS. 


363 


what  seems  a  flat,  barefaced  falsehood.  It  is  notorious  that 
a  man  may  go  on  uttering  false  assertions  about  his  own  acts 
till  he  at  last  believes  in  them.  Is  it  not  possible  that  some¬ 
times,  in  the  very  first  utterance,  there  may  be  a  shape  of 
creed-reciting  belief,  a  reproduction  of  a  traditional  self  which 
is  clung  to  against  all  evidence  ?  There  is  no  knowing  all 
the  disguises  of  the  lying  serpent. 

When  we  come  to  examine  in  detail  what  is  the  sane  mind 
in  sane  body,  the  final  test  of  completeness  seems  to  be  a 
security  of  distinction  between  what  we  have  professed  and 
what  we  have  done,  what  we  have  aimed  at  and  what  we 
have  achieved,  what  we  have  invented  and  what  we  have 
witnessed  or  had  evidenced  to  us,  what  we  think  and  feel 
in  the  present  and  what  we  thought  and  felt  in  the  past. 

I  know  that  there  is  a  common  prejudice  which  regards 
the  habitual  confusion  of  now  and  then,  of  it  was  and  it  is, 
of  it  seemed  so  and  I  should  like  it  to  be  so,  as  a  mark  of  high 
imaginative  endowment,  while  the  power  of  precise  statement 
and  description  is  rated  lower,  as  the  attitude  of  an  every-day 
prosaic  mind.  High,  imagination  is  often  assigned  or  claimed 
as  if  it  were  a  ready  activity  in  fabricating  extravagances  such 
as  are  presented  by  fevered  dreams,  or  as  if  its  possessors 
were  in  that  state  of  inability  to  give  credible  testimony 
which  would  warrant  their  exclusion  from  the  class  of  accept¬ 
able  witnesses  in  a  court  of  justice ;  so  that  a  creative  genius 
might  fairly  be  subjected  to  the  disability  which  some  laws 
have  stamped  on  dicers,  slaves,  and  other  classes  whose  posi¬ 
tion  was  held  perverting  to  their  sense  of  social  responsi¬ 
bility. 

This  endowment  of  mental  confusion  is  often  boasted  of 
by  persons  whose  imaginativeness  would  not  otherwise  be 
known,  unless  it  were  by  the  slow  process  of  detecting  that 
their  descriptions  and  narratives  were  not  to  be  trusted.  Cal- 
lista  is  always  ready  to  testify  of  herself  that  she  is  an  imag¬ 
inative  person ;  and  sometimes  adds,  in  illustration,  that  il  she 
had  taken  a  walk  and  seen  an  old  heap  of  stones  on  her  way, 
the  account  she  would  give  on  returning  would  include  many 


364 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOt. 


pleasing  particulars  of  tier  own  invention,  transforming  the 
simple  heap  into  an  interesting  castellated  ruin.  This  creative 
freedom  is  all  very  well  in  the  right  place ;  but  before  I  can 
grant  it  to  be  a  sign  of  unusual  mental  power,  I  must  inquire 
whether,  on  being  requested  to  give  a  precise  description  of 
what  she  saw,  she  would  be  able  to  cast  aside  her  arbitrary 
combinations  and  recover  the  objects  she  really  perceived,  so 
as  to  make  them  recognizable  by  another  person  who  passed 
the  same  way.  Otherwise  her  glorifying  imagination  is  not 
an  addition  to  the  fundamental  power  of  strong,  discerning 
perception,  but  a  cheaper  substitute.  And  in  fact,  I  find, 
on  listening  to  Callista’s  conversation,  that  she  has  a  very 
lax  conception  even  of  common  objects,  and  an  equally  lax 
memory  of  events.  It  seems  of  no  consequence  to  her  whether 
she  shall  say  that  a  stone  is  overgrown  with  moss  or  with 
lichen ;  that  a  building  is  of  sandstone  or  of  granite ;  that 
Meliboeus  once  forgot  to  put  on  his  cravat  or  that  he  always 
appears  without  it ;  that  everybody  says  so,  or  that  one 
stock-broker’s  wife  said  so  yesterday  ;  that  Philemon  praised 
Euphemia  up  to  the  skies,  or  that  he  denied  knowing  any 
particular  evil  of  her.  She  is  one  of  those  respectable  wit¬ 
nesses  who  would  testify  to  the  exact  moment  of  an  appari¬ 
tion,  because  any  desirable  moment  will  be  as  exact  as  another 
to  her  remembrance ;  or  who  would  be  the  most  worthy  to 
witness  the  action  of  spirits  on  slates  and  tables,  because  the 
action  of  limbs  would  not  probably  arrest  her  attention.  She 
would  describe  the  surprising  phenomena  exhibited  by  the 
powerful  Medium,  with  the  same  freedom  that  she  vaunted 
in  relation  to  the  old  heap  of  stones.  Her  supposed  imagi¬ 
nativeness  is  simply  a  very  usual  lack  of  discriminating 
perception,  accompanied  with  a  less  usual  activity  of  misrep¬ 
resentation,  which,  if  it  had  been  a  little  more  intense,  or 
had  been  stimulated  by  circumstance,  might  have  made  her 
a  profuse  writer,  unchecked  by  the  troublesome  need  of 
veracity. 

These  characteristics  are  the  very  opposite  of  such  as  yield 
a  fine  imagination,  which  is  always  based  on  a  keen  vision, 


FALSE  TESTIMONIALS. 


365 


a  keen  consciousness  of  what  is,  and  carries  the  store  of 
definite  knowledge  as  material  for  the  construction  of  its 
inward  visions.  Witness  Dante,  who  is  at  once  the  most 
precise  and  homely  in  his  reproduction  of  actual  objects,  and 
the  most  soaringly  at  large  m  his  imaginative  combinations. 
On  a  much  lower  level  we  distinguish  the  hyperbole,  and 
rapid  development  in  descriptions  of  persons  and  events, 
which  are  lit  up  by  humorous  intention  in  the  speaker  —  we 
distinguish  this  charming  play  of  intelligence,  which  resem¬ 
bles  musical  improvisation  on  a  given  motive,  where  the 
farthest  sweep  of  curve  is  looped  into  relevancy  by  an  in¬ 
stinctive  method,  from  the  florid  inaccuracy  or  helpless  exag¬ 
geration,  which  is  really  something  commoner  than  the  correct 
simplicity  often  depreciated  as  prosaic. 

Even  if  high  imagination  were  to  be  identified  with  illu¬ 
sion,  there  would  be  the  same  sort  of  difference  between  the 
imperial  wealth  of  illusion  which  is  informed  by  industrious 
observation,  and  the  trumpery  stage-property  illusion  which 
depends  on  the  ill-defined  impressions  gathered  by  capricious 
inclination,  as  there  is  between  a  good  and  a  bad  picture  of 
the  Last  Judgment.  In  both  these  the  subject  is  a  combi¬ 
nation  never  actually  witnessed,  and  in  the  good  picture  the 
general  combination  may  be  of  surpassing  boldness ;  but  on 
examination  it  is  seen  that  the  separate  elements  have  been 
closely  studied  from  real  objects.  And  even  where  we  find 
the  charm  of  ideal  elevation  with  wrong  drawing  and  fantastic 
color,  the  charm  is  dependent  on  the  selective  sensibility  of 
the  painter  to  certain  real  delicacies  of  form  which  confer  the 
expression  he  longed  to  render ;  for  apart  from  this  basis  of 
an  effect  perceived  in  common,  there  could  be  no  conveyance 
of  testhetic  meaning  by  the  painter  to  the  beholder.  In  this 
sense  it  is  as  true  to  say  of  Fra  Angelico’s  Coronation  of  the 
Virgin,  that  it  has  a  strain  of  reality,  as  to  say  so  of  a  portrait 
by  Rembrandt,  which  also  has  its  strain  of  ideal  elevation  to 
Rembrandt’s  virile  selective  sensibility. 

To  correct  such  self-flatterers  as  Callista,  it  is  worth  re¬ 
peating  that  powerful  imagination  is  not  false  outward  vision, 


366 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


but  intense  inward  representation,  and  a  creative  energy  con¬ 
stantly  fed  by  susceptibility  to  the  veriest  minutiae  of  expe¬ 
rience,  which  it  reproduces  and  constructs  in  fresh  and  fresh 
wholes,  —  not  the  habitual  confusion  of  provable  fact  with  the 
fictions  of  fancy  and  transient  inclination,  but  a  breadth  of 
ideal  association  which  informs  every  material  object,  every 
incidental  fact,  with  far-reaching  memories  and  stored  residues 
of  passion,  bringing  into  new  light  the  less  obvious  relations 
of  human  existence.  The  illusion  to  which  it  is  liable  is  not 
that  of  habitually  taking  duck-ponds  for  lilied  pools,  but  of 
being  more  or  less  transiently  and  in  varying  degrees  so 
absorbed  in  ideal  vision  a&  to  lose  the  consciousness  of  sur¬ 
rounding  objects  or  occurrences;  and  when  that  rapt  con¬ 
dition  is  past,  the  sane  genius  discriminates  clearly  between 
what  has  been  given  in  this  parenthetic  state  of  excitement, 
and  what  he  has  known,  and  may  count  on,  in  the  ordinary 
world  of  experience.  Dante  seems  to  have  expressed  these 
conditions  perfectly  in  that  passage  of  the  Purgatorio  where, 
after  a  triple  vision  which  has  made  him  forget  his  surround¬ 
ings,  he  says :  — 

“  Quando  l’anima  mia  tono  di  fnori 
Alle  cose  che  son  fuor  di  lei  vere, 

Io  riconobbi  i  miei  non  falsi  errori.” 

Canto  xt. 

He  distinguishes  the  ideal  truth  of  his  entranced  vision 
from  the  series  of  external  facts  to  which  his  consciousness 
had  returned.  Isaiah  gives  us  the  date  of  his  vision  in  the 
Temple,  “the  year  that  King  Uzziah  died;”  and  if  after¬ 
ward  the  mighty-winged  seraphim  were  present  with  him  as 
he  trod  the  street,  he  doubtless  knew  them  for  images  of 
memory,  and  did  not  cry,  “  Look !  ”  to  the  passers-by. 

Certainly  the  seer,  whether  prophet,  philosopher,  scientific 
discoverer,  or  poet,  may  happen  to  be  rather  mad ;  his  powers 
may  have  been  used  up,  like  Don  Quixote’s,  in  their  visionary 
or  theoretic  constructions,  so  that  the  reports  of  common- 
sense  fail  to  affect  him,  or  the  continuous  strain  of  excitement 


FALSE  TESTIMONIALS. 


367 


may  have  robbed  his  mind  of  its  elasticity.  It  is  hard  for 
our  frail  mortality  to  carry  the  burden  of  greatness  with 
steady  gait  and  full  alacrity  of  perception.  But  he  is  the 
strongest  seer  who  can  support  the  stress  of  creative  energy, 
and  yet  keep  that  sanity  of  expectation  which  consists  in 
distinguishing,  as  l)ante  does,  between  the  cose,  che  son  vere 
outside  the  individual  mind,  and  the  non  falsi  errori  which 
are  the  revelations  of  true  imaginative  power. 


THE  TOO  READY  WRITER. 


ONE  who  talks  too  much,  hindering  the  rest  of  the  com¬ 
pany  from  taking  their  turn,  and  apparently  seeing  no 
reason  why  they  should  not  rather  desire  to  know  his  opinion 
or  experience  in  relation  to  all  subjects,  or  at  least  to  renounce 
the  discussion  of  any  topic  where  he  can  make  no  figure,  has 
never  been  praised  for  this  industrious  monopoly  of  work 
which  others  would  willingly  have  shared  in.  However 
various  and  brilliant  his  talk  may  be,  we  suspect  him  of 
impoverishing  us  by  excluding  the  contributions  of  other 
minds,  which  attract  our  curiosity  the  more  because  he  has 
shut  them  up  in  silence.  Besides,  we  get  tired  of  a  “manner” 
in  conversation  as  in  painting,  when  one  theme  after  another 
is  treated  with  the  same  lines  and  touches.  I  begin  with 
a  liking  for  an  estimable  master,  but  by  tne  time  he  has 
stretched  his  interpretation  of  the  world  unbrokenly  along  a 
palatial  gallery,  I  have  had  what  the  cautious  Scotch  mind 
wonld  call  “enough”  of  him.  There  is  monotony  and  nan 
rowness  already  to  spare  in  my  own  identity;  what  comes 
to  me  from  without  should  be  larger  and  more  impartial 
than  the  judgment  of  any  single  interpreter.  On  this  ground 
even  a  modest  person,  without  power  or  will  to  shine  in  the 
conversation,  may  easily  find  the  predominating  talker  a 
nuisance ;  while  those  who  are  full  of  matter  on  special 
topics  are  continually  detecting  miserably  thin  places  in  the 
web  of  that  information  which  he  will  not  desist  from  im 
parting.  Nobody  that  I  know  of  ever  proposed  a  testimonial 
to  a  man  for  thus  volunteering  the  whole  expense  of  the 
conversation. 


THE  TOO  READY  WRITER. 


369 


Why  is  there  a  different  standard  of  judgment  with  regard 
to  a  writer  who  plays  much  the  same  part  in  literature  as  the 
excessive  talker  plays  in  what  is  traditionally  called  conver¬ 
sation  ?  The  busy  Adrastus,  whose  professional  engagements 
might  seem  more  than  enough  for  the  nervous  energy  of  one 
man,  and  who  yet  finds  time  to  print  essays  on  the  chief  cur¬ 
rent  subjects,  from  the  tri-lingual  inscriptions,  or  the  idea  of 
the  infinite  among  the  prehistoric  Lapps,  to  the  Colorado 
beetle  and  the  grape  disease  in  the  south  of  Trance,  is  gener¬ 
ally  praised,  if  not  admired,  for  the  breadth  of  his  mental 
range  and  his  gigantic  powers  of  work.  Poor  Theron,  who 
has  some  original  ideas  on  a  subject  to  which  he  has  given 
years  of  research  and  meditation,  has  been  waiting  anxiously 
from  month  to  month  to  see  whether  his  condensed  exposition 
will  find  a  place  in  the  next  advertised  programme,  but  sees 
it,  on  the  contrary,  regularly  excluded,  and  twice  the  space 
he  asked  for  filled  with  the  copious  brew  of  Adrastus,  whose 
name  carries  custom  like  a  celebrated  trade-mark.  Why  should 
the  eager  haste  to  tell  what  he  thinks  on  the  shortest  notice, 
as  if  his  opinion  were  a  needed  preliminary  to  discussion,  get 
a  man  the  reputation  of  being  a  conceited  bore  in  conversa¬ 
tion,  when  nobody  blames  the  same  tendency  if  it  shows  itself 
in  print  ?  The  excessive  talker  can  only  be  in  one  gathering 
at  a  time,  and  there  is  the  comfort  of  thinking  that  every¬ 
where  else  other  fellow-citizens  who  have  something  to  say 
may  get  a  chance  of  delivering  themselves ;  but  the  exorbitant 
writer  can  occupy  space  and  spread  over  it  the  more  or  less 
agreeable  flavor  of  his  mind  in  four  “  mediums  ”  at  once,  and 
on  subjects  taken  from  the  four  winds.  Such  restless  and 
versatile  occupants  of  literary  space  and  time  should  have 
lived  earlier,  when  the  world  wanted  summaries  of  all  extant 
knowledge,  and  this  knowledge  being  small,  there  was  the  more 
room  for  commentary  and  conjecture.  They  might  have 
played  the  part  of  an  Isidor  of  Seville  or  a  Vincent  of  Beau¬ 
vais  brilliantly,  and  the  willingness  to  write  everything  them¬ 
selves  would  have  been  strictly  in  place.  In  the  present  day, 
the  busy  retailer  of  other  people’s  knowledge,  which  he  has 

4* 


VOI,.  IX. 


370 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


spoiled  in  the  handling,  the  restless  guesser  and  comments 
tor,  the  importunate  hawker  of  undesirable  superfluities,  the 
everlasting  word-compeller,  who  rises  early  in  the  morning  to 
praise  what  the  world  has  already  glorified,  or  makes  himself 
haggard  at  night  in  writing  out  his  dissent  from  what  nobody 
ever  believed,  is  not  simply  “  gratis,  anhelans,  multa  agendo 
nihil  agens ;  ”  he  is  an  obstruction.  Like  an  incompetent 
architect,  with  too  much  interest  at  his  back,  he  obtrudes  his 
ill-considered  work  where  place  ought  to  have  been  left  to 
better  men. 

Is  it  out  of  the  question  that  we  should  entertain  some 
scruple  about  mixing  our  own  flavor,  as  of  the  too  cheap  and 
insistent  nutmeg,  with  that  of  every  great  writer  and  every 
great  subject  —  especially  when  our  flavor  is  all  we  have  to 
give,  the  matter  or  knowledge  having  been  already  given  by 
somebody  else  ?  What  if  we  were  only  like  the  Spanish  wine¬ 
skins  which  impress  the  innocent  stranger  with  the  notion 
that  the  Spanish  grape  has  naturally  a  taste  of  leather.  One 
could  wish  that  even  the  greatest  minds  should  leave  some 
themes  unhandled,  or  at  least  leave  us  no  more  than  a  para¬ 
graph  or  two  on  them,  to  show  how  well  they  did  in  not  being 
more  lengthy. 

Such  entertainment  of  scruple  can  hardly  be  expected 
from  the  young ;  but  happily  their  readiness  to  mirror  the 
universe  anew  for  the  rest  of  mankind  is  not  encouraged  by 
easy  publicity.  In  the  vivacious  Pepin  I  have  often  seen  the 
image  of  my  early  youth,  when  it  seemed  to  me  astonishing 
that  the  philosophers  had  left  so  many  difficulties  unsolved, 
and  that  so  many  great  themes  had  raised  no  great  poet  to 
treat  them.  I  had  an  elated  sense  that  I  should  find  my  brain 
full  of  theoretic  clews  when  I  looked  for  them,  and  that  wher¬ 
ever  a  poet  had  not  done  what  I  expected,  it  was  for  want  of 
my  insight.  Not  knowing  what  had  been  said  about  the  play 
of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  I  felt  myself  capable  of  writing  some¬ 
thing  original  on  its  blemishes  and  beauties.  In  relation  to 
all  subjects  I  had  a  joyous  consciousness  of  that  ability  which 
is  prior  to  knowledge,  and  of  only  needing  to  apply  myself  in 


THE  TOO  READY  WRITER. 


371 


order  to  master  any  task  —  to  conciliate  philosophers  whose 
systems  were  at  present  but  dimly  known  to  me,  to  estimate 
foreign  poets  whom  I  had  not  yet  read,  to  show  up  mistakes 
in  a  historical  monograph  that  roused  my  interest  in  an  epoch 
which  I  had  been  hitherto  ignorant  of  —  when  I  should  once 
have  had  time  to  verify  my  views  of  probability  by  looking 
into  an  encyclopaedia.  So  Pepin ;  save  only  that  he  is  indus- 
trious  while  I  was  idle.  Like  the  astronomer  in  Rasselas,  I 
swayed  the  universe  in  my  consciousness,  without  making  any 
difference  outside  me ;  whereas  Pepin,  while  feeling  himself 
powerful  with  the  stars  in  their  courses,  really  raises  some 
dust  here  below.  He  is  no  longer  in  his  spring-tide  ;  but  hav¬ 
ing  been  always  busy,  he  has  been  obliged  to  use  his  first 
impressions  as  if  they  were  deliberate  opinions,  and  to  range 
himself  on  the  corresponding  side  in  ignorance  of  much  that 
he  commits  himself  to ;  so  that  he  retains  some  characteristics 
of  a  comparatively  tender  age,  and  among  them  a  certain  sur¬ 
prise  that  there  have  not  been  more  persons  equal  to  himself. 
Perhaps  it  is  unfortunate  for  him  that  he  early  gained  a  hear¬ 
ing,  or  at  least  a  place  in  print,  and  was  thus  encouraged  in 
acquiring  a  fixed  habit  of  writing,  to  the  exclusion  of  any 
other  bread-winning  pursuit.  He  is  already  to  be  classed  as 
a  “  general  writer,”  corresponding  to  the  comprehensive  wants 
of  the  “  general  reader,”  and  with  this  industry  on  his  hands 
it  is  not  enough  for  him  to  keep  up  the  ingenuous  self-reliance 
of  youth :  he  finds  himself  under  an  obligation  to  be  skilled 
in  various  methods  of  seeming  to  know ;  and  having  habit¬ 
ually  expressed  himself  before  he  was  convinced,  his  interest 
in  all  subjects  is  chiefly  to  ascertain  that  he  has  not  made  a 
mistake,  and  to  feel  his  infallibility  confirmed.  That  impulse 
to  decide,  that  vague  sense  of  being  able  to  achieve  the  unat¬ 
tempted,  that  dream  of  aerial  unlimited  movement  at  will 
without  feet  or  wings,  which  were  once  but  the  joyous  mount¬ 
ing  of  young  sap,  are  already  taking  shape  as  unalterable 
woody  fibre ;  the  impulse  has  hardened  into  “  style,”  and  into 
a  pattern  of  peremptory  sentences ;  the  sense  of  ability  in 
the  presence  of  other  men’s  failures  is  turning  into  the  official 


372 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


arrogance  of  one  who  habitually  issues  directions  which  he 
has  never  himself  been  called  on  to  execute;  the  dreamy 
buoyancy  of  the  stripling  has  taken  on  a  fatal  sort  of  reality 
in  written  pretensions  which  carry  consequences.  He  is  on 
the  way  to  become  like  the  loud-buzzing,  bouncing  Bombus, 
who  combines  conceited  illusions  enough  to  supply  several 
patients  in  a  lunatic  asylum,  with  the  freedom  to  show  him¬ 
self  at  large  in  various  forms  of  print.  If  one  who  takes  him¬ 
self  for  the  telegraphic  centre  of  all  American  wires  is  to  be 
confined  as  unfit  to  transact  affairs,  what  shall  we  say  to  the 
man  who  believes  himself  in  possession  of  the  unexpressed 
motives  and  designs  dwelling  in  the  breasts  of  all  sovereigns 
and  all  politicians  ?  And  I  grieve  to  think  that  poor  Pepin, 
though  less  political,  may  by  and  by  manifest  a  persuasion 
hardly  more  sane,  for  he  is  beginning  to  explain  people’s  writ¬ 
ings  by  what  he  does  not  know  about  them.  Yet  he  was  once 
at  the  comparatively  innocent  stage,  which  I  have  confessed 
to  be  that  of  my  own  early  astonishment  at  my  powerful 
originality ;  and  copying  the  just  humility  of  the  old  Puritan, 
I  may  say,  “But  for  the  grace  of  discouragement,  this  cox¬ 
combry  might  have  been  mine.” 

Pepin  made  for  himself  a  necessity  of  writing  (and  getting 
printed)  before  he  had  considered  whether  he  had  the  knowl¬ 
edge  or  belief  that  would  furnish  eligible  matter.  At  first, 
perhaps,  the  necessity  galled  him  a  little,  but  it  is  now  as 
easily  borne,  nay,  is  as  irrepressible  a  habit  as  the  outpouring 
of  inconsiderate  talk.  He  is  gradually  being  condemned  to 
have  no  genuine  impressions,  no  direct  consciousness  of  enjoy¬ 
ment,  or  the  reverse,  from  the  quality  of  what  is  before  him : 
his  perceptions  are  continually  arranging  themselves  in  forms 
suitable  to  a  printed  judgment ;  and  hence  they  will  often 
turn  out  to  be  as  much  to  the  purpose  if  they  are  written 
without  any  direct  contemplation  of  the  object,  and  are  guided 
by  a  few  external  conditions  which  serve  to  classify  it  for  him. 
Tn  this  way  he  is  irrevocably  losing  the  faculty  of  accurate 
mental  vision;  having  bound  himself  to  express  judgments 
which  will  satisfy  some  other  demands  than  that  of  veracity, 


THE  TOO  READY  WRITER. 


373 


he  has  blunted  his  perceptions  by  continual  preoccupation. 
We  cannot  command  veracity  at  will ;  the  power  of  seeing 
and  reporting  truly  is  a  form  of  health  that  has  to  be  deli¬ 
cately  guarded,  and  as  an  ancient  Rabbi  has  solemnly  said, 
“The  penalty  of  untruth  is  untruth.”  But  Pepin  is  only  a 
mild  example  of  the  fact  that  incessant  writing  with  a  view 
to  printing  carries  internal  consequences  which  have  often 
the  nature  of  disease.  And  however  unpractical  it  may  be 
held  to  consider  whether  we  have  anything  to  print  which  it 
is  good  for  the  world  to  read,  or  which  has  not  been  better 
said  before,  it  will  perhaps  be  allowed  to  be  worth  considering 
what  effect  the  printing  may  have  on  ourselves.  Clearly 
there  is  a  sort  of  writing  which  helps  to  keep  the  writer  in  a 
ridiculously  contented  ignorance,  —  raising  in  him  continually 
the  sense  of  having  delivered  himself  effectively,  so  that  the 
acquirement  of  more  thorough  knowledge  seems  as  super¬ 
fluous  as  the  purchase  of  costume  for  a  past  occasion.  He 
has  invested  his  vanity  (perhaps  his  hope  of  income)  in  his 
own  shallownesses  and  mistakes,  and  must  desire  their  pros¬ 
perity.  Like  the  professional  prophet,  he  learns  to  be  glad 
of  the  harm  that  keeps  up  his  credit,  and  to  be  sorry  for  the 
good  that  contradicts  him.  It  is  hard  enough  for  any  of  us, 
amidst  the  changing  winds  of  fortune  and  the  hurly-burly  of 
events,  to  keep  quite  clear  of  a  gladness  which  is  another’s 
calamity;  but  one  may  choose  not  to  enter  on  a  course  which 
will  turn  such  gladness  into  a  fixed  habit  of  mind,  commit¬ 
ting  ourselves  to  be  continually  pleased  that  others  should 
appear  to  be  wrong,  in  order  that  we  may  have  the  air  of 
being  right. 

In  some  cases,  perhaps,  it  might  be  urged  that  Pepin  has 
remained  the  more  self-contented  because  he  has  not  written 
everything  he  believed  himself  capable  of.  He  once  asked 
me  to  read  a  sort  of  programme  of  the  species  of  romance 
which  he  should  think  it  worth  while  to  write  —  a  species 
which  he  contrasted  in  strong  terms  with  the  productions  of 
illustrious  but  overrated  authors  in  this  branch.  Pepin’s 
romance  was  to  present  the  splendors  of  the  Roman  Empire 


374 


ESSAYS  OP  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


at  the  culmination  of  its  grandeur,  when  decadence  was  spirit 
ually  but  not  visibly  imminent ;  it  was  to  show  the  workings 
of  human  passion  in  the  most  pregnant  and  exalted  of  human 
circumstances,  the  designs  of  statesmen,  the  interfusion  of 
philosophies,  the  rural  relaxation  and  converse  of  immortal 
poets,  the  majestic  triumphs  of  warriors,  the  mingling  of  a 
quaint  and  sublime  in  religious  ceremony,  the  gorgeous  de¬ 
lirium  of  gladiatorial  shows,  and  under  all  the  secretly  working 
leaven  of  Christianity.  Such  a  romance  would  not  call  the 
attention  of  society  to  the  dialect  of  stable-boys,  the  low 
habits  of  rustics,  the  vulgarity  of  small  schoolmasters,  the 
manners  of  men  in  livery,  or  to  any  other  form  of  uneducated 
talk  and  sentiments ;  its  characters  would  have  virtues  and 
vices  alike  on  the  grand  scale,  and  would  express  themselves 
in  an  English  representing  the  discourse  of  the  most  powerful 
minds,  in  the  best  Latin,  or  possibly  Greek,  when  there  oc¬ 
curred  a  scene  with  a  Greek  philosopher  on  a  visit  to  Rome, 
or  resident  there  as  a  teacher.  In  this  way  Pepin  would  do 
in  fiction  what  had  never  been  done  before ;  something  not 
at  all  like  “Rienzi”  or  “Notre  Dame  de  Paris,”  or  any  other 
attempt  of  that  kind,  but  something  at  once  more  penetrating 
and  more  magnificent,  more  passionate  and  more  philo¬ 
sophical,  more  panoramic  yet  more  select;  something  that 
would  present  a  conception  of  a  gigantic  period;  in  short, 
something  truly  Roman  and  world-historical. 

When  Pepin  gave  me  this  programme  to  read  he  was 
much  younger  than  at  present.  Some  slight  success  in  an¬ 
other  vein  diverted  him  from  the  production  of  panoramic 
and  select  romance ;  and  the  experience  of  not  having  tried 
to  carry  out  his  programme  has  naturally  made  him  more 
biting  and  sarcastic  on  the  failures  of  those  who  have  actually 
written  romances  without  apparently  having  had  a  glimpse  of 
a  conception  equal  to  his.  Indeed,  I  am  often  comparing 
his  rather  touchingly  inflated  naivete ,  as  of  a  small  young 
person  walking  on  tiptoe  while  he  is  talking  of  elevated 
things,  at  the  time  when  he  felt  himself  the  author  of  that  un¬ 
written  romance,  with  his  present  epigrammatic  curtness  and 


THE  TOO  READY  WRITER. 


375 


affectation  of  power  kept  strictly  in  reserve.  His  paragraphs 
now  seem  to  have  a  bitter  smile  in  them,  from  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  a  mind  too  penetrating  to  accept  any  other  man’s 
ideas,  and  too  equally  competent  in  all  directions  to  seclude 
his  power  in  any  one  form  of  creation,  but  rather  fitted  to 
hang  over  them  all  as  a  lamp  of  guidance  to  the  stumblers 
below.  You  perceive  how  proud  he  is  of  not  being  indebted 
to  any  writer ;  even  with  the  dead  he  is  on  the  creditor’s  side, 
for  he  is  doing  them  the  service  of  letting  the  world  know 
what  they  meant  better  than  those  poor  pre-Pepinians  them¬ 
selves  had  any  means  of  doing;  and  he  treats  the  mighty 
shades  very  cavalierly. 

Is  this  fellow-citizen  of  ours,  considered  simply  in  the 
light  of  a  baptized  Christian  and  tax-paying  Englishman, 
really  as  madly  conceited,  as  empty  of  reverential  feeling,  as 
unveracious  and  careless  of  justice,  as  full  of  catch-penny  de¬ 
vices  and  stagey  attitudinizing,  as  on  examination  his  writing 
shows  itself  to  be  ?  By  no  means.  He  has  arrived  at  the 
present  pass  in  “the  literary  calling”  through  the  self- 
imposed  obligation  to  give  himself  a  manner  which  would 
convey  the  impression  of  superior  knowledge  and  ability. 
He  is  much  worthier  and  more  admirable  than  his  written 
productions,  because  the  moral  aspects  exhibited  in  his 
writing  are  felt  to  be  ridiculous  or  disgraceful  in  the  personal 
relations  of  life.  In  blaming  Pepin’s  writing,  we  are  ac¬ 
cusing  the  public  conscience,  which  is  so  lax  and  ill-formed 
on  the  momentous  bearings  of  authorship,  that  it  sanctions 
the  total  absence  of  scruple  in  undertaking  and  prosecuting 
what  should  be  the  best  warranted  of  vocations 

Hence  I  still  accept  friendly  relations  with  Pepin,  for  he 
has  much  private  amiability ;  and  though  he  probably  thinks 
of  me  as  a  man  of  slender  talents,  without  rapidity  of  coup 
d'oeil,  and  with  no  compensatory  penetration,  he  meets  me 
very  cordially,  and  would  not,  I  am  sure,  willingly  pain  me  in 
conversation  by  crudely  declaring  his  low  estimate  of  my 
capacity.  Yet  I  have  often  known  him  to  insult  my  betters, 
and  contribute  (perhaps  unreflectingly)  to  encourage  injurious 


rVT6  ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 

conceptions  of  them ;  but  that  is  done  in  the  course  of  his 
professional  writing,  and  the  public  conscience  still  leaves 
such  writing  nearly  on  a  level  of  the  Merry-Andrew’s  dress, 
which  permits  an  impudent  deportment  and  extraordinary 
gambols  to  one  who,  in  his  ordinary  clothing,  shows  himself 
the  decent  father  of  a  family. 


DISEASES  OF  SMALL  AUTHORSHIP. 


ARTICULAR  callings,  it  is  known,  encourage  particular 


JL  diseases.  There  is  a  painter’s  colic ;  the  Sheffield  grinder 
falls  a  victim  to  the  inhalation  of  steel-dust ;  clergymen  so 
often  have  a  kind  of  sore  throat  that  this  otherwise  secular 
ailment  gets  named  after  them.  And  perhaps,  if  we  were  to 
inquire,  we  should  find  a  similar  relation  between  certain 
moral  ailments  and  these  various  occupations,  though  here  in 
the  case  of  clergymen  there  would  be  specific  differences ; 
the  poor  curate,  equally  with  the  rector,  is  liable  to  clergy¬ 
man’s  sore  throat,  but  he  would  probably  be  found  free  from 
the  chronic  moral  ailments  encouraged  by  the  possession  of 
glebe  and  those  higher  chances  of  preferment  which  follow 
on  having  a  good  position  already.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
poor  curate  might  have  severe  attacks  of  calculating  ex¬ 
pectancy  concerning  parishioners’  turkeys,  cheeses,  and  fat 
geese,  or  of  uneasy  rivalry  for  the  donations  of  clerical 
charities. 

Authors  are  so  miscellaneous  a  class  that  their  personified 
diseases,  physical  and  moral,  might  include  the  whole  proces¬ 
sion  of  human  disorders,  led  by  dyspepsia  and  ending  in  mad¬ 
ness —  the  awful  dumb-show  of  a  world-historic  tragedy. 
Take  a  large  enough  area  of  human  life,  and  all  comedy 
melts  into  tragedy,  like  the  Fool’s  part  of  the  side  of  Lear. 
The  chief  scenes  get  filled  with  erring  heroes,  guileful  usurp¬ 
ers,  persecuted  discoverers,  dying  deliverers  everywhere  the 
protagonist  has  a  part  pregnant  with  doom.  The  comedy 
sinks  to  an  accessory,  and  if  there  are  loud  laughs  they 
seem  a  convulsive  transition  from  sobs ;  or  if  the  comedy  is 


878 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  El  IOT. 


touched  with  a  gentle  lovingness,  the  panoramic  scene  is  one 
where 

“  Sadness  is  a  kind  of  mirth, 

So  mingled  as  if  mirth  did  make  us  sad 
And  sadness  merry.”1 

But  I  did  not  set  out  on  the  wide  survey  that  would  carry 
me  into  tragedy,  and,  in  fact,  had  nothing  more  serious  in 
my  mind  than  certain  small  chronic  ailments  that  come  of 
small  authorship.  I  was  thinking  principally  of  Vorticella, 
who  flourished  in  my  youth,  not  only  as  a  portly  lady  walk¬ 
ing  in  silk  attire,  but  also  as  the  authoress  of  a  book  entitled 
“  The  Channel  Islands,  with  Notes  and  an  Appendix.”  I 
would  by  no  means  make  it  a  reproach  to  her  that  she  wrote 
no  more  than  one  book  ;  on  the  contrary,  her  stopping  there 
seems  to  me  a  laudable  example.  What  one  would  have 
wished,  after  experience,  was  that  she  had  refrained  from 
producing  even  that  single  volume,  and  thus  from  giving  her 
self-importance  a  troublesome  kind  of  double  incorporation 
which  became  oppressive  to  her  acquaintances,  and  set  up  in 
herself  one  of  those  slight  chronic  forms  of  disease  to  which 
I  have  just  referred.  She  lived  in  the  considerable  provincial 
town  of  Pumpiter,  which  had  its  own  newspaper  press,  with 
the  usual  divisions  of  political  partisanship  and  the  usual 
varieties  of  literary  criticism  —  the  florid  and  allusive,  the 
staccato  and  peremptory,  the  clairvoyant  and  prophetic,  the 
safe  and  pattern-phrased,  or  what  one  might  call  “  the  rnany- 
a-long-day  style.” 

Vorticella,  being  the  wife  of  an  important  townsman,  had 
naturally  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  “  The  Channel  Islands  ” 
reviewed  by  all  the  organs  of  Pumpiter  opinion,  and  their 
articles  or  paragraphs  held  as  naturally  the  opening  pages 
in  the  elegantly  bound  album  prepared  by  her  for  the 
reception  of  “  critical  opinions.”  This  ornamental  volume 
lay  on  a  special  table  in  her  drawing-room,  close  to  the  still 
more  gorgeously  bound  work  of  which  it  was  the  significant 


1  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen. 


DISEASES  OE  SMALL  AUTHORSHIP. 


379 


effect,  and  every  guest  was  allowed  tlie  privilege  of  reading 
what  had  been  said  of  the  authoress  and  her  work  in  the 
“  Pumpiter  Gazette  and  Literary  Watchman,”  the  “  Pumpshire 
Post,”  the  “  Church  Clock,”  the  “  Independent  Monitor,”  and 
the  lively  but  judicious  publication  known  as  the  “  Medley 
Pie ;  ”  to  be  followed  up,  if  lie  chose,  by  the  instructive  perusal 
of  the  strikingly  confirmatory  judgments,  sometimes  concur¬ 
rent  in  the  very  phrases,  of  journals  from  the  most  distant 
countries,  as  the  “  Latchgate  Argus,”  the  “  Penllwy  Universe,” 
the  “  Cockaleekie  Advertiser,”  the  “  Goodwin  Sands  Opinion,” 
and  the  “  Land’s  End  Times.” 

I  had  friends  in  Pumpiter,  and  occasionally  paid  a  long 
visit  there.  When  I  called  on  Vorticella,  who  had  a  cousin- 
ship  with  my  hosts,  she  had  to  excuse  herself  because  a 
message  claimed  her  attention  for  eight  or  ten  minutes ;  and 
handing  me  the  album  of  critical  opinions,  said,  with  a  certain 
emphasis  which,  considering  my  youth,  was  highly  compli¬ 
mentary,  that  she  would  really  like  me  to  read  what  I  should 
find  there.  This  seemed  a  permissive  politeness  which  I 
could  not  feel  to  be  an  oppression ;  and  I  ran  my  eyes  over  the 
dozen  pages,  each  with  a  strip  or  islet  of  newspaper  in  the 
centre,  with  that  freedom  of  mind  (in  my  case  meaning  free¬ 
dom  to  forget)  which  would  be  a  perilous  way  of  preparing 
for  examination.  This  ad  libitum  perusal  had  its  interest  for 
me.  The  private  truth  being  that  I  had  not  read  “The 
Channel  Islands,”  I  was  amazed  at  the  variety  of  matter 
which  the  volume  must  contain,  to  have  impressed  these 
different  judges  with  the  writer’s  surpassing  capacity  to 
handle  almost  all  branches  of  inquiry  and  all  forms  of  pre¬ 
sentation.  In  Jersey  she  had  shown  herself  a  historian,  in 
Guernsey  a  poetess,  in  Alderney  a  political  economist,  and  in 
Sark  a  humorist.  There  were  sketches  of  character  scattered 
through  the  pages  which  might  put  our  “  fictionists  ”  to  the 
blush ;  the  style  was  eloquent  and  racy,  studded  with  gems 
of  felicitous  remark ;  and  the  moral  spirit  throughout  was  so 
superior  that,  said  one,  “  the  recording  angel  ”  (who  is  not 
supposed  to  take  account  of  literature  as  such)  “would 


380 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


assuredly  set  down  the  work  as  a  deed  of  religion.”  The  force 
of  this  eulogy  on  the  part  of  several  reviewers  was  much 
heightened  by  the  incidental  evidence  of  their  fastidious  and 
severe  taste,  which  seemed  to  suffer  considerably  from  the 
imperfections  of  our  chief  writers,  even  the  dead  and  canon¬ 
ized  :  one  afflicted  them  with  the  smell  of  oil ,  another  lacked 
erudition,  and  attempted  (though  vainly)  to  dazzle  them  with 
trivial  conceits ;  one  wanted  to  be  more  philosophical  than 
nature  had  made  him ;  another,  in  attempting  to  be  comic, 
produced  the  melancholy  effect  of  a  half-starved  Merry-An¬ 
drew  ;  while  one  and  all,  from  the  author  of  the  “  Areopagi- 
tica  ”  downward,  had  faults  of  style  which  must  have  made  an 
able  hand  in  the  “  Latchgate  Argus  ”  shake  the  many-glanced 
head  belonging  thereto  with  a  smile  of  compassionate  dis¬ 
approval.  Not  so  the  authoress  of  “The  Channel  Islands;” 
Vorticella  and  Shakspeare  were  allowed  to  be  faultless.  I 
gathered  that  no  blemishes  were  observable  in  the  work  of 
this  accomplished  writer,  and  the  repeated  information  that 
she  was  “  second  to  none  ”  seemed  after  this  superfluous.  Her 
thick  octavo  —  notes,  appendix,  and  all  — was  unflagging  from 
beginning  to  end ;  and  the  “Land’s  End  Times,”  using  a  rather 
dangerous  rhetorical  figure,  recommended  you  not  to  take  up 
the  volume  unless  you  had  leisure  to  finish  it  at  a  sitting.  It 
had  given  one  writer  more  pleasure  than  he  had  had  for 
many  a  long  day  —  a  sentence  which  had  a  melancholy  reso¬ 
nance,  suggesting  a  life  of  studious  languor  such  as  all 
previous  achievements  of  the  human  mind  failed  to  stimulate 
into  enjoyment.  I  think  the  collection  of  critical  opinions 
wound  up  with  this  sentence,  and  I  had  turned  back  to  look 
at  the  lithographed  sketch  of  the  authoress  which  fronted 
the  first  page  of  the  album,  when  the  fair  original  re-entered, 
and  I  laid  down  the  volume  on  its  appropriate  table. 

“  Well,  what  do  you  think  of  them  ?  ”  said  Vorticella,  with 
an  emphasis  which  had  some  significance  unperceived  by  me. 
“  I  know  you  are  a  great  student.  Give  me  your  opinion  of 
these  opinions.” 

“  They  must  be  very  gratifying  to  you,”  I  answered,  with 


DISEASES  OF  SMALL  AUTHORSHIP. 


381 


a  little  confusion ;  for  I  perceived  that  I  might  easily  mis¬ 
take  my  footing,  and  I  began  to  have  a  presentiment  of  an 
examination  for  which  I  was  by  no  means  crammed. 

“On  the  whole  —  yes,”  said  Yorticella,  in  a  tone  of  con¬ 
cession.  “  A  few  of  the  notices  are  written  with  some  pains, 
but  not  one  of  them  has  really  grappled  with  the  chief  idea 
in  the  appendix.  I  don’t  know  whether  you  have  studied 
political  economy,  but  you  saw  what  I  said  on  page  398  about 
the  Jersey  fisheries  ?” 

I  bowed  —  I  confess  it  —  with  the  mean  hope  that  this 
movement  in  the  nape  of  my  neck  would  be  taken  as  sufficient 
proof  that  I  had  read,  marked,  and  learned.  I  do  not  forgive 
myself  for  this  pantomimic  falsehood;  but  I  was  young  and 
morally  timorous,  and  Vorticella’s  personality  had  an  effect 
on  me  something  like  that  of  a  powerful  mesmerizer,  when 
he  directs  all  his  ten  fingers  toward  your  eyes,  as  unpleasantly 
visible  ducts  for  the  invisible  stream.  I  felt  a  great  power 
of  contempt  in  her  if  I  did  not  come  up  to  her  expectations. 

“Well,”  she  resumed,  “you  observe  that  not  one  of  them 
has  taken  up  that  argument;  but  I  hope  I  convinced  you 
about  the  drag-nets  ?  ” 

Here  was  a  judgment  on  me.  Orientally  speaking,  I  had 
lifted  up  my  foot  on  the  steep  descent  of  falsity,  and  was 
compelled  to  set  it  down  on  a  lower  level.  “  I  should  think 
you  must  be  right,”  said  I,  inwardly  resolving  that  on  the 
next  topic  I  would  tell  the  truth. 

“I  know  that  I  am  right,”  said  Yorticella.  “The  fact  is 
that  no  critic  in  this  town  is  fit  to  meddle  with  such  subjects 
unless  it  be  Yolvox,  and  he,  with  all  his  command  of  lan¬ 
guage,  is  very  superficial.  It  is  Volvox  who  writes  in  the 
‘Monitor.’  I  hope  you  noticed  how  he  contradicts  himself  ?  ” 

My  resolution,  helped  by  the  equivalence  of  dangers,  stoutly 
prevailed,  and  I  said  “No.” 

“  No !  I  am  surprised.  He  is  the  only  one  who  finds  fault 
with  me.  He  is  a  Dissenter,  you  know.  The  ‘  Monitor  ’  is  the 
Dissenters’  organ,  but  my  husband  has  been  so  useful  to  them 
in  municipal  affairs  that  they  would  not  venture  to  run  my 


382 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


book  down ;  they  feel  obliged  to  tell  the  truth  about  me. 
Still,  Volvox  betrays  himself.  After  praising  me  for  my 
penetration  and  accuracy,  he  presently  says  I  have  allowed 
myself  to  be  imposed  upon,  and  have  let  my  active  imagina¬ 
tion  run  away  with  me.  That  is  like  his  Dissenting  imperti¬ 
nence.  Active  my  imagination  may  be,  but  1  have  it  under 
control.  Little  Vibrio,  who  writes  the  playful  notice  in  the 
‘Medley  Pie/  has  a  clever  hit  at  Volvox  in  that  passage  about 
the  steeple-chase  of  imagination,  where  the  loser  wants  to 
make  it  appear  that  the  winner  was  only  run  away  with. 
But  if  you  did  not  notice  Volvox’s  self-contradiction  you 
would  not  see  the  point,”  added  Vorticella,  with  rather  a 
chilling  intonation.  “  Or  perhaps  you  did  not  read  the  ‘  Med¬ 
ley  Pie ’  notice  ?  That  is  a  pity.  Do  take  up  the  book  again. 
Vibrio  is  a  poor  little  tippling  creature  ;  but,  as  Mr.  Carlyle 
would  say,  he  has  an  eye,  and  he  is  always  lively.” 

I  did  take  up  the  book  again,  and  read  as  demanded. 

“It  is  very  ingenious,”  said  I,  really  appreciating  the 
difficulty  of  being  lively  in  this  connection ;  it  seemed  even 
more  wonderful  than  that  a  Vibrio  should  have  an  eye. 

“You  are  probably  surprised  to  see  no  notices  from  the 
London  press,”  said  Vorticella.  “I  liave  one,  —  a  very  re¬ 
markable  one,  —  but  I  reserve  it  until  the  others  have  spoken, 
and  then  I  shall  introduce  it  to  wind  up.  I  shall  have  them 
reprinted,  of  course,  and  inserted  in  future  copies.  This  from 
the  ‘  Candelabrum  ’  is  only  eight  lines  in  length,  but  full  of 
venom.  It  calls  my  style  dull  and  pompous.  I  think  that 
will  tell  its  own  tale,  placed  after  the  other  critiques .” 

“People’s  impressions  are  so  different,”  said  I.  “Some 
persons  find  ‘  Don  Quixote  ’  dull.” 

“Yes,”  said  Vorticella,  in  emphatic  chest-tones,  “dulness 
is  a  matter  of  opinion  ;  but  pompous  !  That  I  never  was  and 
never  could  be.  Perhaps  he  means  that  my  matter  is  too 
important  for  his  taste ;  and  I  have  no  objection  to  that.  I 
did  not  intend  to  be  trivial.  I  should  just  like  to  read  you 
that  passage  about  the  drag-nets,  because  I  could  make  it 
clearer  to  you.” 


DISEASES  OF  SMALL  AUTHORSHIP. 


388 


A  second  (less  ornamental)  copy  was  at  her  elbow  and  was 
already  opened,  when  to  my  great  relief  another  guest  was 
announced,  and  I  was  able  to  take  my  leave  without  seeming 
to  run  away  from  “  The  Channel  Islands,”  though  not  with¬ 
out  being  compelled  to  carry  with  me  the  loan  of  “  the  marked 
copy,”  which  I  was  to  find  advantageous  in  a  reperusal  of  the 
appendix,  and  was  only  requested  to  return  before  my  de¬ 
parture  from  Pumpiter.  Looking  into  the  volume  now  with 
some  curiosity,  I  found  it  a  very  ordinary  combination  of  the 
commonplace  and  ambitious  —  one  of  those  books  which  one 
might  imagine  to  have  been  written  under  the  old  Grub  Street 
coercion  of  hunger  and  thirst,  if  they  were  not  known  before¬ 
hand  to  be  the  gratuitous  productions  of  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
whose  circumstances  might  be  called  altogether  easy,  but  for 
an  uneasy  vanity  that  happened  to  have  been  directed  toward 
authorship.  Its  importance  was  that  of  a  polypus,  tumor, 
fungus,  or  other  erratic  outgrowth,  noxious  and  disfiguring 
in  its  effect  on  the  individual  organism  which  nourishes  it. 
Poor  Vorticella  might  not  have  been  more  wearisome  on  a 
visit  than  the  majority  of  her  neighbors,  but  for  this  disease 
of  magnified  self-importance  belonging  to  small  authorship. 
I  understand  that  the  chronic  complaint  of  “The  Channel 
Islands  ”  never  left  her.  As  the  years  went  on,  and  the 
publication  tended  to  vanish  in  the  distance  for  her  neighbors’ 
memory,  she  was  still  bent  on  dragging  it  to  the  foreground  ; 
and  her  chief  interest  in  new  acquaintances  was  the  possibility 
of  lending  them  her  book,  entering  into  all  details  concerning 
it,  and  requesting  them  to  read  her  album  of  “  critical  opin¬ 
ions.”  This  really  made  her  more  tiresome  than  Gregarina, 
whose  distinction  was  that  she  had  had  cholera,  and  who  did 
not  feel  herself  in  her  true  position  with  strangers  until  they 
knew  it. 

My  experience  with  Vorticella  led  me  for  a  time  into  the 
false  supposition  that  this  sort  of  fungous  disfiguration,  which 
makes  Self  disagreeably  larger,  was  most  common  to  the  fe¬ 
male  sex ;  but  I  presently  found  that  here  too  the  male  could 
assert  his  superiority  and  show  a  more  vigorous  boredom.  I 


384 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


have  known  a  man  with  a  single  pamphlet  containing  an  as- 
surance  that  somebody  else  was  wrong,  together  with  a  few 
approved  quotations,  produce  a  more  powerful  effect  of  shud¬ 
dering  at  his  approach  than  ever  Vorticella  did  with  her 
varied  octavo  volume,  including  notes  and  appendix.  Males 
of  more  than  one  nation  recur  to  my  memory  who  produced 
from  their  pocket  on  the  slightest  encouragement  a  small 
pink  or  buff  duodecimo  pamphlet,  wrapped  in  silver  paper, 
as  a  present  held  ready  for  an  intelligent  reader.  “  A  mode 
of  propagandism,”  you  remark  in  excuse  ;  “  they  wished  to 
spread  some  useful  corrective  doctrine.”  Not  necessarily; 
the  indoctrination  aimed  at  was  perhaps  to  convince  you  of 
their  own  talents  by  the  sample  of  an  “  Ode  on  Shakspeare’s 
Birthday,”  or  a  translation  from  Horace. 

Vorticella  may  pair  off  with  Monas,  who  had  also  written 
his  one  book,  —  “  Here  and  There  ;  or,  a  Trip  from  Truro  to 
Transylvania,  ”  —  and  not  only  carried  it  in  his  portmanteau 
when  he  went  on  visits,  but  took  the  earliest  opportunity  of 
depositing  it  in  the  drawing-room,  and  afterward  would  enter 
to  look  for  it,  as  if  under  pressure  of  a  need  for  reference, 
begging  the  lady  of  the  house  to  tell  him  whether  she  had 
seen  “a  small  volume  bound  in  red.”  One  hostess  at  last 
ordered  it  to  be  carried  into  his  bedroom  to  save  his  time ; 
but  it  presently  reappeared  in  his  hands,  and  was  again  left, 
with  inserted  slips  of  paper,  on  the  drawing-room  table. 

Depend  upon  it,  vanity  is  human  —  native  alike  to  men  and 
women  ;  only  in  the  male  it  is  of  denser  texture,  less  volatile, 
so  that  it  less  immediately  informs  you  of  its  presence,  but  is 
more  massive  and  capable  of  knocking  you  down  if  you  come 
into  collision  with  it ;  while  in  woman  vanity  lays  by  its  small 
revenges  as  in  a  needle-case  always  at  hand.  The  difference 
is  in  muscle  and  finger-tips,  in  traditional  habits  and  mental 
perspective,  rather  than  in  the  original  appetite  of  vanity.  It 
is  an  approved  method  now  to  explain  ourselves  by  a  refer¬ 
ence  to  the  races  as  little  like  us  as  possible ;  which  leads  me 
to  observe  that  in  Fiji  the  men  use  the  most  elaborate  hair¬ 
dressing,  and  that  wherever  tattooing  is  in  vogue  the  male 


DISEASES  OF  SMALL  AUTHORSHIP. 


385 


expects  to  carry  off  the  prize  of  admiration  for  pattern  and 
workmanship.  Arguing  analogically,  and  looking  for  this 
tendency  of  the  Fijian  or  Hawaian  male  in  the  eminent 
European,  we  must  suppose  that  it  exhibits  itself  under  the 
forms  of  civilized  apparel ;  and  it  would  be  a  great  mistake 
to  estimate  passionate  effort  by  the  effect  it  produces  on  our 
perception  or  understanding.  It  is  conceivable  that  a  man 
may  have  concentrated  no  less  will  and  expectation  on  his 
wristbands,  gaiters,  and  the  shape  of  his  hat-brim,  or  an 
appearance  which  impresses  you  as  that  of  the  modern 
“  swell,”  than  the  Ojibbeway  on  an  ornamentation  which 
seems  to  us  much  more  elaborate.  In  what  concerns  the 
search  for  admiration,  at  least,  it  is  not  true  that  the  effect 
is  equal  to  the  cause  and  resembles  it.  The  cause  of  a  flat 
curl  on  the  masculine  forehead,  such  as  might  be  seen  when 
George  the  Fourth  was  king,  must  have  been  widely  different 
in  quality  and  intensity  from  the  impression  made  by  that 
small  scroll  of  hair  on  the  organ  of  the  beholder.  Merely  to 
maintain  an  attitude  and  gait  which  I  notice  in  certain  club 
men,  and  especially  an  inflation  of  the  chest  accompanying 
very  small  remarks,  there  goes,  I  am  convinced,  an  expendi¬ 
ture  of  psychical  energy  little  appreciated  by  the  multitude  — 
a  mental  vision  of  Self  and  deeply  impressed  beholders,  which 
is  quite  without  antitype  in  what  we  call  the  effect  produced 
by  that  hidden  process. 

No !  there  is  no  need  to  admit  that  women  would  carry 
away  the  prize  of  vanity  in  a  competition  where  differences 
of  custom  were  fairly  considered.  A  man  cannot  show  his 
vanity  in  a  tight  skirt  which  forces  him  to  walk  sideways 
down  the  staircase ;  but  let  the  match  be  between  the  respec¬ 
tive  vanities  of  largest  beard  and  tightest  skirt,  and  here  too 
the  battle  would  be  to  the  strong. 


VOL.  IX. 


26 


MORAL  SWINDLERS. 


IT  is  a  familiar  example  of  irony  in  the  degradation  of 
words  that  “  what  a  man  is  worth  ”  has  come  to  mean 
how  much  money  he  possesses  ;  but  there  seems  a  deeper 
and  more  melancholy  irony  in  the  shrunken  meaning  that 
popular  or  polite  speech  assigns  to  “  morality  ”  and  “  morals.” 
The  poor  part  these  words  are  made  to  play  recalls  the  fate 
of  those  pagan  divinities  who,  after  being  understood  to  rule 
the  powers  of  the  air  and  the  destinies  of  men,  came  down 
to  the  level  of  insignificant  demons,  or  were  even  made  a 
farcical  show  for  the  amusement  of  the  multitude. 

Talking  to  Melissa  in  a  time  of  commercial  trouble,  I  found 
her  disposed  to  speak  pathetically  of  the  disgrace  which  had 
fallen  on  Sir  Gavial  Mantrap,  because  of  his  conduct  in  rela¬ 
tion  to  the  Eocene  Mines,  and  to  other  companies  ingeniously 
devised  by  him  for  the  punishment  of  ignorance  in  people  of 
small  means :  a  disgrace  by  which  the  poor  titled  gentleman 
was  actually  reduced  to  live  in  comparative  obscurity  on  his 
wife’s  settlement  of  one  or  two  hundred  thousand  in  the 
consols. 

“  Surely  your  pity  is  misapplied,”  said  I,  rather  dubiously ; 
for  I  like  the  comfort  of  trusting  that  a  correct  moral  judg¬ 
ment  is  the  strong  point  in  woman  (seeing  that  she  has  a 
majority  of  about  a  million  in  our  island),  and  I  imagined 
that  Melissa  might  have  some  unexpressed  grounds  for  her 
opinion.  “  I  should  have  thought  you  would  rather  be  sorry 
for  Mantrap’s  victims — the  widows,  spinsters,  and  hard-work¬ 
ing  fathers,  whom  his  unscrupulous  haste  to  make  himself  rich 
has  cheated  of  all  their  savings,  while  he  is  eating  well,  lying 


MORAL  SWINDLERS. 


387 


softly,  and,  after  impudently  justifying  himself  before  the 
public,  is  perhaps  joining  in  the  General  Confession  with  a 
sense  that  he  is  an  acceptable  object  in  the  sight  of  God, 
though  decent  men  refuse  to  meet  him.” 

“  Oh,  all  that  about  the  Companies,  I  know,  was  most  un¬ 
fortunate.  In  commerce  people  are  led  to  do  so  many  things, 
and  he  might  not  know  exactly  how  everything  would  turn 
out.  But  Sir  Gavial  made  a  good  use  of  his  money,  and  he 
is  a  thoroughly  moral  man.” 

“  What  do.  you  mean  by  a  thoroughly  moral  man  ?  ”  said  I. 

“  Oh,  I  suppose  every  one  means  the  same  by  that,”  said 
Melissa,  with  a  slight  air  of  rebuke.  “  Sir  Gavial  is  an  excel 
lent  family  man  —  quite  blameless  there  •  and  so  charitable 
round  his  place  at  Tip-top.  Very  different  from  Mr.  Barab- 
bas,  whose  life,  my  husband  tells  me,  is  most  objectionable, 
with  actresses  and  that  sort  of  thing.  I  think  a  man’s  morals 
should  make  a  difference  to  us.  I ’m  not  sorry  for  Mr.  Barab- 
bas,  but  I  am  sorry  for  Sir  Gavial  Mantrap.” 

I  will  not  repeat  my  answer  to  Melissa,  for  I  fear  it  waa 
offensively  brusque,  my  opinion  being  that  Sir  Gavial  was 
the  more  pernicious  scoundrel  of  the  two,  since  his  name  for 
virtue  served  as  an  effective  part  of  a  swindling  apparatus ; 
and  perhaps  I  hinted  that  to  call  such  a  man  “  moral  ”  showed 
rather  a  silly  notion  of  human  affairs.  In  fact,  I  had  an 
angry  .wish  to  be  instructive,  and  Melissa,  as  will  sometimes 
happen,  noticed  my  anger  without  appropriating  my  instruc¬ 
tion  ;  for  I  have  since  heard  that  she  speaks  of  me  as  rather 
violent-tempered,  and  not  over-strict  in  my  views  of  morality. 

I  wish  that  this  narrow  use  of  words  which  are  wanted  in 
their  full  meaning  were  confined  to  women  like  Melissa.  See¬ 
ing  that  “  morality  ”  and  “morals,”  under  their  alias  of  Ethics, 
are  the  subject  of  voluminous  discussion,  and  their  true  basis 
a  pressing  matter  of  dispute  —  seeing  that  the  most  famous 
book  ever  written  on  Ethics,  and  forming  a  chief  study  in  oui 
colleges,  allies  ethical  with  political  science,  or  that  which 
treats  of  the  constitution  and  prosperity  of  states,  one  might 
expect  that  educated  men  would  find  reason  to  avoid  a  per- 


388 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


version  of  language  which  lends  itself  to  no  wider  view  or 
life  than  that  of  village  gossips.  Yet  I  find  even  respectable 
historians  of  our  own  and  of  foreign  countries,  after  showing 
that  a  king  was  treacherous,  rapacious,  and  ready  to  sanction 
gross  breaches  in  the  administration  of  justice,  end  by  prais¬ 
ing  him  for  his  pure  moral  character ;  by  which  one  must  sup¬ 
pose  them  to  mean  that  he  was  not  lewd  nor  debauched,  not 
the  European  twin  of  the  typical  Indian  potentate  whom 
Macaulay  describes  as  passing  his  life  in  chewing  bang  and 
fondling  dancing-girls.  And  since  we  are  sometimes  told  of 
such  maleficent  kings  that  they  were  religious,  we  arrive  at 
the  curious  result,  that  the  most  serious  wide-reaching  duties 
of  man  lie  quite  outside  both  morality  and  religion  —  the 
one  of  these  consisting  in  not  keeping  mistresses  (and  per¬ 
haps  not  drinking  too  much),  and  the  other  in  certain  ritual 
and  spiritual  transactions  with  God,  which  can  be  carried  on 
equally  well  side  by  side  with  the  basest  conduct  toward 
men.  With  such  a  classification  as  this  it  is  no  wonder,  con¬ 
sidering  the  strong  reaction  of  language  on  thought,  that 
many  minds,  dizzy  with  indigestion  of  recent  science  and 
philosophy,  are  far  to  seek  for  the  grounds  of  social  duty, 
and  without  entertaining  any  private  intention  of  committing 
a  perjury  which  would  ruin  an  innocent  man,  or  seeking  gain 
by  supplying  bad  preserved  meats  to  our  navy,  feel  them¬ 
selves  speculatively  obliged  to  inquire  why  they  should  not 
do  so,  and  are  inclined  to  measure  their  intellectual  subtlety 
by  their  dissatisfaction  with  all  answers  to  this  “  Why  ?  ”  It 
is  of  little  use  to  theorize  in  ethics  while  our  habitual  phrase¬ 
ology  stamps  the  larger  part  of  our  social  duties  as  something 
that  lies  aloof  from  the  deepest  needs  and  affections  of  our 
nature.  The  informal  definitions  of  popular  language  are  the 
only  medium  through  which  theory  really  affects  the  mass  of 
minds,  even  among  the  nominally  educated ;  and  when  a  man 
whose  business  hours,  the  solid  part  of  every  day,  are  spent 
in  an  unscrupulous  course  of  public  or  private  action  which 
has  every  calculable  chance  of  causing  wide-spread  injury 
and  misery,  can  be  called  moral  because  he  comes  home  to 


MORAL  SWINDLERS. 


389 


dine  with  his  wife  and  children  and  cherishes  the  happiness 
of  his  own  hearth,  the  augury  is  not  good  for  the  use  of  high 
ethical  and  theological  disputation. 

Not  for  one  moment  would  one  willingly  lose  sight  of  the 
truth  that  the  relation  of  the  sexes  and  the  primary  ties  of 
kinship  are  the  deepest  roots  of  human  well-being,  but  to 
make  them  by  themselves  the  equivalent  of  morality  is  ver¬ 
bally  to  cut  off  the  channels  of  feeling  through  which  they 
are  the  feeders  of  that  well-being.  They  are  the  original 
fountains  of  a  sensibility  to  the  claims  of  others,  which  is  the 
bond  of  societies ;  but  being  necessarily  in  the  first  instance  , 
a  private  good,  there  is  always  the  danger  that  individual  self¬ 
ishness  will  see  in  them  only  the  best  part  of  its  own  gain ; 
just  as  knowledge,  navigation,  commerce,  and  all  the  condi¬ 
tions  which  are  of  a  nature  to  awaken  men’s  consciousness  of 
their  mutual  dependence  and  to  make  the  world  one  great 
society,  are  the  occasions  of  selfish,  unfair  action,  of  war  and 
oppression,  so  long  as  the  public  conscience  or  chief  force  of 
feeling  and  opinion  is  not  uniform  and  strong  enough  in  its 
insistence  on  what  is  demanded  by  the  general  welfare.  And 
among  the  influences  that  must  retard  a  right  public  judg¬ 
ment,  the  degradation  of  words  which  involve  praise  and 
blame  will  be  reckoned  worth  protesting  against  by  every 
mature  observer.  To  rob  words  of  half  their  meaning,  while 
they  retain  their  dignity  as  qualifications,  is  like  allowing  to 
men  who  have  lost  half  their  faculties  the  same  high  and 
perilous  command  which  they  won  in  their  time  of  vigor,  or 
like  selling  food  and  seeds  after  fraudulently  abstracting  their 
best  virtues;  in  each  case  what  ought  to  be  beneficently 
strong  is  fatally  enfeebled,  if  not  empoisoned.  Until  we 
have  altered  our  dictionaries  and  have  found  some  other  word 
than  “  morality  ”  to  stand  in  popular  use  for  the  duties  of  man 
to  man,  let  us  refuse  to  accept  as  moral  the  contractor  who 
enriches  himself  by  using  large  machinery  to  make  paste¬ 
board  soles  pass  as  leather  for  the  feet  of  unhappy  conscripts 
fighting  at  miserable  odds  against  invaders ;  let  us  rather 
call  him  a  miscreant,  though  he  were  the  tenderest,  most 


390 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT- 


faithful  of  husbands,  and  contend  that  his  own  experience  of 
home  happiness  makes  his  reckless  infliction  of  suffering  on 
others  all  the  more  atrocious.  Let  us  refuse  to  accept  as 
moral  any  political  leader  who  should  allow  his  conduct  in 
relation  to  great  issues  to  be  determined  by  egoistic  passion, 
and  boldly  say  that  he  would  be  less  immoral,  even  though 
he  were  as  lax  in  his  personal  habits  as  Sir  Robert  Walpole, 
if  at  the  same  time  his  sense  of  the  public  welfare  were 
supreme  in  his  mind,  quelling  all  pettier  impulses  beneath  a 
magnanimous  impartiality.  And  though  we  were  to  .  find 
among  that  class  of  journalists  who  live  by  recklessly  report¬ 
ing  injurious  rumors,  insinuating  the  blackest  motives  in 
opponents,  descanting  at  large  and  with  an  air  of  infallibility 
on  dreams  which  they  both  find  and  interpret,  and  stimu¬ 
lating  bad  feeling  between  nations  by  abusive  writing  which 
is  as  empty  of  real  conviction  as  the  rage  of  a  pantomime- 
king,  and  would  be  ludicrous  if  its  effects  did  not  make  it 
appear  diabolical  —  though  we  were  to  find  among  these  a 
man  who  was  benignancy  itself  in  his  own  circle,  a  healer  of 
private  differences,  a  soother  in  private  calamities,  let  us 
pronounce  him  nevertheless  flagrantly  immoral,  a  root  of 
hideous  cancer  in  the  commonwealth,  turning  the  channels 
of  instruction  into  feeders  of  social  and  political  disease. 

In  opposite  ways  one  sees  bad  effects  likely  to  be  encouraged 
by  this  narrow  use  of  the  word  “  morals,”  shutting  out  from 
its  meaning  half  those  actions  of  a  man’s  life  which  tell  mo¬ 
mentously  on  the  well-being  of  his  fellow-citizens,  and  on  the 
preparation  of  a  future  for  the  children  growing  up  around 
him.  Thoroughness  of  workmanship,  care  in  the  execution 
of  every  task  undertaken,  as  if  it  were  the  acceptance  of  a 
trust  which  it  would  be  a  breach  of  faith  not  to  discharge 
well,  is  a  form  of  duty  so  momentous  that  if  it  were  to  die 
out  from  the  feeling  and  practice  of  a  people,  all  reforms  of 
institutions  would  be  helpless  to  create  national  prosperity 
and  national  happiness.  Do  we  desire  to  see  public  spirit 
penetrating  all  classes  of  the  community  and  affecting  every 
man’s  conduct,  so  that  he  shall  make  neither  the  saving  of 


MORAL  SWINDLERS. 


391 


his  soul  nor  any  other  private  saving  an  excuse  for  indif¬ 
ference  to  the  general  welfare  ?  Well  and  good.  But  the 
sort  of  public  spirit  that  scamps  its  bread-winning  work, 
whether  with  the  trowel,  the  pen,  or  the  overseeing  brain, 
that  it  may  hurry  to  scenes  of  political  or  social  agitation, 
would  be  as  baleful  a  gift  to  our  people  as  any  malignant 
demon  could  devise.  One  best  part  of  educational  training 
is  that  which  comes  through  special  knowledge  and  manipula¬ 
tive  or  other  skill, — with  its  usual  accompaniment  of  delight, 
in  relation  to  work  which  is  the  daily  bread-winning  occupa¬ 
tion,  —  which  is  a  man’s  contribution  to  the  effective  wealth 
of  society  in  return  for  what  he  takes  as  his  own  share.  But 
this  duty  of  doing  one’s  proper  work  well,  and  taking  care 
that  every  product  of  one’s  labor  shall  be  genuinely  what 
it  pretends  to  be,  is  not  only  left  out  of  morals  in  popular 
speech;  it  is  very  little  insisted  on  by  public  teachers,  at 
least  in  the  only  effective  way  —  by  tracing  the  continuous 
effects  of  ill-done  work.  Some  of  them  seem  to  be  still 
hopeful  that  it  will  follow  as  a  necessary  consequence  from 
week-day  services,  ecclesiastical  decoration,  and  improved 
hymn-books ;  others  apparently  trust  to  descanting  on  self¬ 
culture  in  general,  or  to  raising  a  general  sense  of  faulty 
circumstances ;  and  meanwhile  lax,  makeshift  work,  from  the 
high  conspicuous  kind  to  the  average  and  obscure,  is  allowed 
to  pass  unstamped  with  the  disgrace  of  immorality,  though 
there  is  not  a  member  of  society  who  is  not  daily  suffering 
from  it  materially  and  spiritually,  and  though  it  is  the  fatal 
cause  that  must  degrade  our  national  rank  and  our  commerce, 
in  spite  of  all  open  markets  and  discovery  of  available  coal- 
seams. 

I  suppose  one  may  take  the  popular  misuse  of  the  words 
11  morality  ”  and  u  morals  ”  as  some  excuse  for  certain  absurdi¬ 
ties  which  are  occasional  fashions  in  speech  and  writing  —  cer¬ 
tain  old  lay-figures,  as  ugly  as  the  queerest  Asiatic  idol,  which 
at  different  periods  get  propped  into  loftiness,  and  attired  in 
magnificent  Venetian  drapery,  so  that  whether  they  have  ?. 
human  face  or  not  is  of  little  consequence.  One  is,  the  no- 


392 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


tion  that  there  is  a  radical,  irreconcilable  opposition  between 
intellect  and  morality.  I  do  not  mean  the  simple  statement 
of  fact,  which  everybody  knows,  that  remarkably  able  men 
have  had  very  faulty  morals,  and  have  outraged  public  feel¬ 
ing  even  at  its  ordinary  standard ;  but  the  supposition  that 
the  ablest  intellect,  the  highest  genius,  will  see  through  mor¬ 
ality  as  a  sort  of  twaddle  for  bibs  and  tuckers,  a  doctrine  of 
dulness,  a  mere  incident  in  human  stupidity.  We  begin  to 
understand  the  acceptance  of  this  foolishness  by  considering 
that  we  live  in  a  society  where  we  may  hear  a  treacherous 
monarch,  or  a  malignant  and  lying  politician,  or  a  man  who 
uses  either  official  or  literary  power  as  an  instrument  of  his 
private  partiality  or  hatred,  or  a  manufacturer  who  devises 
the  falsification  of  wares,  or  a  trader  who  deals  in  virtueless 
seed-grains,  praised  or  compassionated  because  of  his  excel¬ 
lent  morals.  Clearly,  if  morality  meant  no  more  than  such 
decencies  as  are  practised  by  these  poisonous  members  of 
society,  it  would  be  possible  to  say,  without  suspicion  of 
light-headedness,  that  morality  lay  aloof  from  the  grand 
stream  of  human  affairs,  as  a  small  channel  fed  by  the  stream 
and  not  missed  from  it.  While  this  form  of  nonsense  is  con¬ 
veyed  in  the  popular  use  of  words,  there  must  be  plenty  of 
well-dressed  ignorance  at  leisure  to  run  through  a  box  of 
books,  which  will  feel  itself  initiated  in  the  freemasonry 
of  intellect  by  a  view  of  life  which  might  take  for  a  Shak- 
spearian  motto, 

“Fair  is  foul  and  foul  is  fair, 

Hover  through  the  fog  and  filthy  air,” 

and  will  find  itself  easily  provided  with  striking  conversation 
by  the  rule  of  reversing  all  the  judgments  on  good  and  evil 
which  have  come  to  be  the  calendar  and  clock-work  of  society. 
But  let  our  habitual  talk  give  morals  their  full  meaning  as  the 
conduct  which,  in  every  human  relation,  would  follow  from 
the  fullest  knowledge  and  the  fullest  sympathy,  — a  meaning 
perpetually  corrected  and  enriched  by  a  more  thorough  appre¬ 
ciation  of  dependence  in  things,  and  a  finer  sensibility  to 


MORAL  SWINDLERS. 


393 


both  physical  and  spiritual  fact,  —  and  this  ridiculous  ascrip¬ 
tion  of  superlative  power  to  minds  which  have  no  effective 
awe-inspiring  vision  of  the  human  lot,  no  response  of  under¬ 
standing  to  the  connection  between  duty  and  the  material 
processes  by  which  the  world  is  kept  habitable  for  cultivated 
man,  will  be  tacitly  discredited  without  any  need  to  cite  the, 
immortal  names  that  all  are  obliged  to  take  as  the  measure 
of  intellectual  rank  and  highly  charged  genius. 

Suppose  a  Frenchman — I  mean  no  disrespect  to  the  great 
French  nation,  for  all  nations  are  afflicted  with  their  peculiar 
parasitic  growths,  which  are  lazy,  hungry  forms,  usually  char¬ 
acterized  by  a  disproportionate  swallowing  apparatus  —  sup¬ 
pose  a  Parisian  who  should  shuffle  down  the  Boulevard  with 
a  soul  ignorant  of  the  gravest  cases  and  the  deepest  tender¬ 
ness  of  manhood,  and  a  frame  more  or  less  fevered  by  de¬ 
bauchery,  mentally  polishing  into  utmost  refinement  of  phrase 
and  rhythm  verses  which  were  an  enlargement  on  that  Sliak- 
spearian  motto,  and  worthy  of  the  most  expensive  title  to  be 
furnished  by  the  venders  of  such  antithetic  ware  as  “  Les  Mar¬ 
guerites  de  l’Enfer,”  or  “  Les  delices  de  Beelzebuth.”  This 
supposed  personage  might  probably  enough  regard  his  nega¬ 
tion  of  those  moral  sensibilities  which  make  half  the  warp  and 
woof  of  human  history  —  his  indifference  to  the  hard  thinking 
and  hard  handiwork  of  life,  to  which  he  owed  even  his  own 
gauzy  mental  garments,  with  their  spangles  of  poor  paradox  — 
as  the  royalty  of  genius,  for  we  are  used  to  witness  such  self¬ 
crowning  in  many  forms  of  mental  alienation;  but  he  would 
not,  I  think,  be  taken,  even  by  his  own  generation,  as  a  living 
proof  that  there  can  exist  such  a  combination  as  that  of  moral 
stupidity  and  trivial  emphasis  of  personal  indulgence,  with  the 
large  yet  finely  discriminating  vision  which  marks  the  intel¬ 
lectual  masters  of  our  kind.  Doubtless  there  are  many  sorts 
of  transfiguration,  and  a  man  who  has  come  to  be  worthy  of 
all  gratitude  and  reverence  may  have  had  his  swinish  period, 
wallowing  in  ugly  places ;  but  suppose  it  had  been  handed 
down  to  us  that  Sophocles  or  Virgil  had  at  one  time  made 
himself  scandalous  in  this  way;  the  works  which  have 


394 


ASSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


consecrated  their  memory  for  our  admiration  and  gratitude 
are  not  a  glorifying  of  swinishness,  but  an  artistic  incorpora¬ 
tion  of  the  highest  sentiment  known  to  their  age. 

All  these  may  seem  to  be  wide  reasons  for  objecting  to 
Melissa’s  pity  for  Sir  Gavial  Mantrap,  on  the  ground  of  his 
good  morals ;  but  their  connection  will  not  be  obscure  to  any 
one  who  has  taken  pains  to  observe  the  links  uniting  the 
scattered  signs  of  our  social  development. 


SHADOWS  OF  THE  COMING  RACE. 


MY  friend  Trost,  who  is  no  optimist  as  to  the  state  of 
the  universe  hitherto,  but  is  confident  that  at  some 
future  period,  within  the  duration  of  the  solai  system,  ours 
will  be  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds, —  a  hope  which  I 
always  honor  as  a  sign  of  beneficent  qualities,  —  my  friend 
Trost  always  tries  to  keep  up  my  spirits,  under  the  sight  of 
the  extremely  unpleasant  and  disfiguring  work  by  which 
many  of  our  fellow-creatures  have  to  get  their  bread,  with 
the  assurance  that  “all  this  will  soon  be  done  by  machinery  ” 
But  he  sometimes  neutralizes  the  consolation  by  extending  it 
over  so  large  an  area  of  human  labor,  and  insisting  so  im¬ 
pressively  on  the  quantity  of  energy  which  will  thus  be  set 
free  for  loftier  purposes,  that  I  am  tempted  to  desire  an  oc¬ 
casional  famine  of  invention  in  the  coming  ages,  lest  the 
humbler  kinds  of  work  should  be  entirely  nullified  while 
there  are  still  left  some  men  and  women  who  are  not  fit  for 
the  highest. 

Especially,  when  one  considers  the  perfunctory  way  in 
which  some  of  the  most  exalted  tasks  are  already  executed 
by  those  who  are  understood  to  be  educated  for  them,  there 
rises  a  fearful  vision  of  the  human  race  evolving  machinery 
which  will  by  and  by  throw  itself  fatally  out  of  work.  When, 
in  the  Bank  of  England,  I  see  a  wondrously  delicate  machine 
for  testing  sovereigns,  a  shrewd  implacable  little  steel  Rhad- 
amanthus  that,  once  the  coins  are  delivered  up  to  it,  lifts  and 
balances  each  in  turn  for  the  fraction  of  an  instant,  fin.  It'  it 
wanting  or  sufficient,  and  dismisses  it  to  right  or  left  with 
rigorous  justice  ;  when  I  am  told  of  micrometers  and  thermo 


-396 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


piles  and  tasimeters,  which  deal  physically  with  the  invisible, 
the  impalpable,  and  the  unimaginable ;  of  cunning  wires  and 
wheels  and  pointing  needles  which  will  register  your  and  my 
quickness  so  as  to  exclude  flattering  opinion ;  of  a  machine 
for  drawing  the  right  conclusion,  which  will  doubtless  by-and- 
by  be  improved  into  an  automaton  for  finding  true  premises ; 
of  a  microphone  which  detects  the  cadence  of  a  fly’s  foot  on 
the  ceiling,  and  may  be  expected  presently  to  discriminate 
the  noises  of  our  various  follies  as  they  soliloquize  or  con¬ 
verse  in  our  brains,  — my  mind  seeming  too  small  for  these 
things,  I  get  a  little  out  of  it,  like  an  unfortunate  savage  too 
suddenly  brought  face  to  face  with  civilization,  and  I  exclaim : 

“Am  I  already  in  the  shadow  of  the  Coming  Race  ?  and 
will  the  creatures  who  are  to  transcend  and  finally  supersede 
us  be  steely  organisms,  giving  out  the  effluvia  of  the  labora¬ 
tory,  and  performing,  with  infallible  exactness,  more  than 
everything  that  we  have  performed,  with  a  slovenly  approxi¬ 
mativeness,  and  self-defeating  inaccuracy  ?  ” 

“  But,”  says  Trost,  treating  me  with  cautious  mildness  on 
hearing  me  vent  this  raving  notion,  “  you  forget  that  these 
wonder-workers  are  the  slaves  of  our  race,  need  our  tendance 
and  regulation,  obey  the  mandates  of  our  consciousness,  and 
are  only  deaf  and  dumb  bringers  of  reports  which  we  decipher 
and  make  use  of.  They  are  simply  extensions  of  the  human 
organism,  so  to  speak,  limbs  immeasurably  more  powerful, 
ever  more  subtle  finger-tips,  ever  more  mastery  over  the  in¬ 
visibly  great  and  the  invisibly  small.  Each  new  machine 
needs  a  new  appliance  of  human  skill  to  construct  it,  new 
devices  to  feed  it  with  material,  and  often  keener-edged  facul¬ 
ties  to  note  its  registrations  or  performances.  How,  then, 
can  machines  supersede  us  ?  They  depend  upon  us.  When 
we  cease,  they  cease.” 

“  I  am  not  so  sure  of  that,”  said  I,  getting  back  into  my 
mind,  and  becoming  rather  wilful  in  consequence.  “  If,  as  I 
have  heard  you  contend,  machines  as  they  are  more  and  more 
perfected  will  require  less  and  less  of  tendance,  how  do  I 
know  that  they  may  not  be  ultimately  made  to  carry,  or  may 


SHADOWS  OF  THE  COMING  RACE. 


397 


not  in  themselves  evolve,  conditions  of  self-supply,  self-repair, 
and  reproduction,  and  not  only  do  all  the  mighty  and  subtle 
work  possible  on  this  planet  better  than  we  could  do  it,  but 
with  the  immense  advantage  of  banishing  from  the  earth’s 
atmosphere  screaming  consciousnesses  which,  in  our  compara¬ 
tively  clumsy  race,  make  an  intolerable  noise  and  fuss  to  each 
other  about  every  petty  ant-like  performance,  looking  on  at 
all  work  only  as  it  were  to  spring  a  rattle  here  or  blow  a 
trumpet  there,  with  a  ridiculous  sense  of  being  effective  ?  I 
for  my  part  cannot  see  any  reason  why  a  sufficiently  penetrat¬ 
ing  thinker,  who  can  see  his  way  through  a  thousand  years 
or  so,  should  not  conceive  a  parliament  of  machines,  in  which 
the  manners  were  excellent  and  the  motions  infallible  in  logic ; 
one  honorable  instrument,  a  remote  descendant  of  the  Voltaic 
family,  might  discharge  a  powerful  current  (entirely  without 
animosity)  on  an  honorable  instrument  opposite,  of  more  up¬ 
start  origin,  but  belonging  to  the  ancient  edge-tool  race,  which 
we  already  at  Sheffield  see  paring  thick  iron  as  if  it  were  mel¬ 
low  cheese  —  by  this  unerringly  directed  discharge  operating 
on  movements  corresponding  to  what  we  call  Estimates,  and 
by  necessary  mechanical  consequence  on  movements  corre¬ 
sponding  •  to  what  we  call  the  Funds,  which,  with  a  vain 
analogy,  we  sometimes  speak  of  as  ‘  sensitive.’  For  every 
machine  would  be  perfectly  educated,  that  is  to  say,  would  have 
the  suitable  molecular  adjustments,  which  would  act  not  the 
less  infallibly  for  being  free  from  the  fussy  accompaniment 
of  that  consciousness  to  which  our  prejudice  gives  a  supreme 
governing  rank,  when  in  truth  it  is  an  idle  parasite  on  the 
grand  sequence  of  things.” 

“  Nothing  of  the  sort !  ”  returned  Trost,  getting  angry, 
and  judging  it  kind  to  treat  me  with  some  severity ;  “  what 
you  have  heard  me  say  is,  that  our  race  will  and  must  act  as 
a  nervous  centre  to  the  utmost  development  of  mechanical 
processes :  the  subtly  refined  powers  of  machines  will  react 
in  producing  more  subtly  refined  thinking  processes,  which 
will  occupy  the  minds  set  free  from  grosser  labor.  Say,  for 
example,  that  all  the  scavengers’  work  in  London  were  done. 


398 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


so  fax  as  human  attention  is  concerned,  by  the  occasional  pres¬ 
sure  of  a  brass  button  (as  in  the  ringing  of  an  electric  bell), 
you  will  then  have  a  multitude  of  brains  set  free  for  the  ex¬ 
quisite  enjoyment  of  dealing  with  the  exact  sequences  and 
high  speculations  supplied  and  prompted  by  the  delicate  ma¬ 
chines  which  yield  a  response  to  the  fixed  stars,  and  give 
readings  of  the  spiral  vortices  fundamentally  concerned  in 
the  production  of  epic  poems  or  great  judicial  harangues.  So 
far  from  mankind  being  thrown  out  of  work,  according  to 
your  notion,”  concluded  Trost,  with  a  peculiar  nasal  note  of 
scorn,  “  if  it  were  not  for  your  incurable  dilettanteism  in  sci¬ 
ence  as  in  all  other  things  —  if  you  had  once  understood  the 
action  of  any  delicate  machine  —  you  would  perceive  that  the 
sequences  it  carries  throughout  the  realm  of  phenomena 
would  require  many  generations,  perhaps  eons  of  understand¬ 
ings  considerably  stronger  than  yours,  to  exhaust  the  store  of 
work  it  lays  open.” 

“Precisely,”  said  I,  with  a  meekness  which  I  felt  was 
praiseworthy ;  “  it  is  the  feebleness  of  my  capacity,  bringing 
me  nearer  than  you  to  the  human  average,  that  perhaps  ena¬ 
bles  me  to  imagine  certain  results  better  than  you  can. 
Doubtless  the  very  fishes  of  your  rivers,  gullible  as  they 
look,  and  slow  as  they  are  to  be  rightly  convinced  in  another 
order  of  facts,  form  fewer  false  expectations  about  each  other 
than  we  should  form  about  them  if  we  were  in  a  position  of 
somewhat  fuller  intercourse  with  their  species  ;  for  even  as  it 
is,  we  have  continually  to  be  surprised  that  they  do  not  rise 
to  our  carefully  selected  bait.  Take  me  then  as  a  sort  of  re¬ 
flective  and  experienced  carp,  but  do  not  estimate  the  justice 
of  my  ideas  by  my  facial  expression.” 

“  Pooh !  ”  says  Trost.  (W e  are  on  very  intimate  terms.) 

“  Naturally,”  I  persisted,  “  it  is  less  easy  to  you  than  to 
me  to  imagine  our  race  transcended  and  superseded,  since  the 
more  energy  a  being  is  possessed  of,  the  harder  it  must  be 
for  him  to  conceive  his  own  death.  But  I,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  a  reflective  carp,  can  easily  imagine  myself  and  my 
congeners  dispensed  with  in  the  frame  of  things,  and  giving 


SHADOWS  OF  THE  COMING  RACE. 


399 


way  not  only  to  a  superior  but  a  vastly  different  kind  of  en 
tity.  What  I  would  ask  you  is,  to  show  me  why,  since  each 
new  invention  casts  a  new  light  along  the  pathway  of  dis¬ 
covery,  and  each  new  combination  or  structure  brings  into 
play  more  conditions  than  its  inventor  foresaw,  there  should 
not  at  length  be  a  machine  of  such  high  mechanical  powers 
that  it  would  find  and  assimilate  the  material  to  supply  its 
own  waste,  and  then,  by  a  further  evolution  of  internal 
molecular  movements,  reproduce  itself  by  some  process  of 
fission  or  budding.  This  last  stage  having  been  reached, 
either  by  man’s  contrivance  or  as  an  unforeseen  result,  one 
sees  that  the  process  of  natural  selection  must  drive  men 
altogether  out  of  the  field ;  for  they  will  long  before  then 
have  begun  to  sink  into  the  miserable  condition  of  those 
unhappy  characters  in  fable,  who  having  demons  or  djinns  at 
their  beck,  and  being  obliged  to  supply  them  with  work, 
found  too  much  of  everything  done  in  too  short  a  time. 
What  demons  so  potent  as  molecular  movements,  none  the 
less  tremendously  potent  for  not  carrying  the  futile  cargo  of 
a  consciousness  screeching  irrelevantly,  like  a  fowl  tied  head 
downmost  to  the  saddle  of  a  swift  horseman  ?  Under  such 
uncomfortable  circumstances,  our  race  will  have  diminished 
with  the  diminishing  call  on  their  energies  ;  and  by  the  time 
that  the  self-repairing  and  reproducing  machines  arise,  all  but 
a  few  of  the  rare  inventors,  calculators,  and  speculators  will 
have  become  pale,  pulpy,  and  cretinous  from  fatty  or  other 
degeneration,  and  behold  around  them  a  scanty  hydro- 
cephalous  offspring.  As  to  the  breed  of  the  ingenious  and 
intellectual,  their  nervous  systems  will  at  last  have  been 
overwrought  in  following  the  molecular  revelations  of  the 
immensely  more  powerful  unconscious  race,  and  they  will 
naturally,  as  the  less  energetic  combinations  of  movement, 
subside  like  the  flame  of  a  candle  in  the  sunlight.  Thus  the 
feebler  race,  whose  corporeal  adjustments  happened  to  be 
accompanied  with  a  maniacal  consciousness  which  imagined 
itself  moving  its  mover,  will  have  vanished,  as  all  less  adapted 
existences  do  before  the  Attest  —  i.  e.,  the  existence  composed 


400 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


of  the  most  persistent  groups  of  movements  and  the  most 
capable  of  incorporating  new  groups  in  harmonious  relation. 
Who,  if  our  consciousness  is,  as  I  have  been  given  to  under¬ 
stand,  a  mere  stumbling  of  our  organisms  on  their  way  to 
unconscious  perfection, — who  shall  say  that  those  fittest  ex¬ 
istences  will  not  be  found  along  the  track  of  what  we  call  in¬ 
organic  combinations,  which  will  carry  on  the  most  elaborate 
processes  as  mutely  and  painlessly  as  we  are  now  told  that 
the  minerals  are  metamorphosing  themselves  continually  in 
the  dark  laboratory  of  the  earth’s  crust  ?  Thus  this  planet 
may  be  filled  with  beings  who  will  be  blind  and  deaf  as  the 
inmost  rock,  yet  will  execute  changes  as  delicate  and  com¬ 
plicated  as  those  of  human  language,  and  all  the  intricate 
web  of  what  we  call  its  effects,  without  sensitive  impression, 
without  sensitive  impulse ;  there  may  be,  let  us  say,  mute 
orations,  mute  rhapsodies,  mute  discussions,  and  no  conscious¬ 
ness  there  even  to  enjoy  the  silence.” 

“  Absurd  !  ”  grumbled  Trost. 

“  The  supposition  is  logical,”  said  I.  “  It  is  well  argued 
from  the  premises.” 

u  Whose  premises  ?  ”  cried  Trost,  turning  on  me  with 
some  fierceness.  “  You  don’t  mean  to  call  them  mine,  I 
hope  ?  ” 

“  Heaven  forbid.  They  seem  to  be  flying  about  in  the  air 
witli  other  germs,  and  have  found  a  sort  of  nidus  among  my 
melancholy  fancies.  Nobody  really  holds  them.  They  bear 
the  same  relation  to  real  belief,  as  walking  on  the  head  for  a 
show  does  to  running  away  from  an  explosion  or  walking 
last  to  catch  the  train.” 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEP!  HEP! 


0  discern  likeness  amidst  diversity,  it  is  well  known, 


JL  does  not  require  so  fine  a  mental  edge  as  the  discerning 
of  diversity  amidst  general  sameness.  The  primary  rough 
classification  depends  on  the  prominent  resemblances  of 
things  :  the  progress  is  toward  finer  and  finer  discrimination 
according  to  minute  differences. 

Yet  even  at  this  stage  of  European  culture,  one’s  attention 
is  continually  drawn  to  the  prevalence  of  that  grosser  mental 
sloth  which  makes  people  dull  to  the  most  ordinary  prompt¬ 
ing  of  comparison,  the  bringing  things  together  because  of 
their  likeness.  The  same  motives,  the  same  ideas,  the  same 
practices,  are  alternately  admired  and  abhorred,  lauded  and 
denounced,  according  to  their  association  with  superficial 
differences,  historical  or  actually  social.  Even  learned  writers, 
treating  of  great  subjects,. often  show  an  attitude  of  mind  not 
greatly  superior  in  its  logic  to  that  of  the  frivolous  fine  lady 
who  is  indignant  at  the  frivolity  of  her  maid. 

To  take  only  the  subject  of  the  Jews  :  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  a  form  of  bad  reasoning  about  them  which  has  not 
been  heard  in  conversation  or  been  admitted  to  the  dignity 
of  print ;  but  the  neglect  of  resemblances  is  a  common  prop¬ 
erty  of  dulness  which  unites  all  the  various  points  of  view  — 
the  prejudiced,  the  puerile,  the  spiteful,  and  the  abysmally 
ignorant. 

That  the  preservation  of  national  memories  is  an  element 
and  a  means  of  national  greatness ;  that  their  revival  is  a  sign 
of  reviving  nationality ;  that  every  heroic  defender,  every  pa¬ 
triotic  restorer,  has  been  inspired  by  such  memories  and  has 


VOL.  IX. 


402 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


made  them  his  watchword  ;  that  even  such  a  corporate  exist 
ence  as  that  of  a  Roman  legion  or  an  English  regiment  has 
been  made  valorous  by  memorial  standards,  —  these  are  the 
glorious  commonplaces  of  historic  teaching  at  our  public 
schools  and  universities,  being  happily  ingrained  in  Greek 
and  Latin  classics.  They  have  also  been  impressed  on  the 
world  by  conspicuous  modern  instances.  That  there  is  a  free 
modern  Greece  is  due  —  through  all  infiltration  of  other  than 
Greek  blood  —  to  the  presence  of  ancient  Greece  in  the 
consciousness  of  European  men;  and  every  speaker  would 
feel  his  point  safe  if  he  were  to  praise  Byron’s  devotion  to  a 
cause  made  glorious  by  ideal  identification  with  the  past ; 
hardly  so,  if  he  were  to  insist  that  the  Greeks  were  not  to  be 
helped  further  because  their  history  shows  that  they  were 
anciently  unsurpassed  in  treachery  and  lying,  and  that  many 
modern  Greeks  are  highly  disreputable  characters,  while 
others  are  disposed  to  grasp  too  large  a  share  of  our  com¬ 
merce.  The  same  with  Italy  ;  the  pathos  of  his  country’s 
lot  pierced  the  youthful  soul  of  Mazzini,  because,  like  Dante’s, 
his  blood  was  fraught  with  the  kinship  of  Italian  greatness, 
his  imagination  filled  with  a  majestic  past  that  wrought  it¬ 
self  into  a  majestic  future.  Half  a  century  ago,  what  was 
Italy  ?  An  idling-place  of  dilettanteism  or  of  itinerant 
motiveless  wealth,  a  territory  parcelled  out  for  papal  suste¬ 
nance,  dynastic  convenience,  and  the  profit  of  an  alien 
Government.  What  were  the  Italians  ?  No  people,  no  voice 
in  European  counsels,  no  massive  power  in  European  affairs : 
a  race  thought  of  in  English  and  French  society  as  chiefly 
adapted  to  the  operatic  stage,  or  to  secure  as  models  for 
painters ;  disposed  to  smile  gratefully  at  the  reception  of 
half-pence  ;  and  by  the  more  historical  remembered  to  be 
rather  polite  than  truthful  —  in  all  probability,  a  combination 
of  Machiavelli,  Rubini,  and  Masaniello.  Thanks  chiefly  to  the 
divine  gift  of  a  memory  which  inspires  the  moments  with  a 
past,  a  present,  and  a  future,  and  gives  the  sense  of  corporate 
existence  that  raises  man  above  the  otherwise  more  respectable 
and  innocent  brute,  all  that,  or  most  of  it,  is  changed. 


THE  MODERN  Il%P !  IIEP!  HEP! 


403 


Again,  one  of  our  living  historians  finds  just  sympathy  in 
his  vigorous  insistence  on  our  true  ancestry,  on  our  being  the 
strongly  marked  heritors,  in  language  and  genius,  of  those  old 
English  seamen,  who,  beholding  a  rich  country  with  a  most 
convenient  seaboard,  came,  doubtless  with  a  sense  of  divine 
warrant,  and  settled  themselves  on  this  or  the  other  side 
of  fertilizing  streams,  gradually  conquering  more  and  more 
of  the  pleasant  land  from  the  natives  who  knew  nothing  of 
Odin,  and  finally  making  unusually  clean  work  in  ridding 
themselves  of  those  prior  occupants.  “  Let  us,”  he  virtually 
says  —  “  let  us  know  who  were  our  forefathers,  who  it  was 
that  won  the  soil  for  us,  and  brought  the  good  seed  of  those 
institutions  through  which  we  should  not  arrogantly  but 
gratefully  feel  ourselves  distinguished  among  the  nations  as 
possessors  of  long-inherited  freedom ;  let  us  not  keep  up  an 
ignorant  kind  of  naming  which  disguises  our  true  affinities 
of  blood  and  language,  but  let  us  see  thoroughly  what  sort 
of  notions  and  traditions  our  forefathers  had,  aud  what  sort  of 
song  inspired  them.  Let  the  poetic  fragments  which  breathe 
forth  their  fierce  bravery  in  battle,  and  their  trust  in  fierce 
gods  who  helped  them,  be  treasured  with  affectionate  rever¬ 
ence.  These  seafaring,  invading,  self-asserting  men  were  the 
English  of  old  time,  and  were  our  fathers,  who  did  rough 
work  by  which  we  are  profiting.  They  had  virtues  which 
incorporated  themselves  in  wholesome  usages,  to  which  we 
trace  our  own  political  blessings.  Let  us  know  and  acknowl¬ 
edge  our  common  relationship  to  them,  and  be  thankful  that, 
over  and  above  the  affections  and  duties  which  spring  from 
our  manhood,  we  have  the  closer  and  more  constantly  guiding 
duties  which  belong  to  us  as  Englishmen.” 

To  this  view  of  our  nationality  most  persons,  who  have 
feeling  and  understanding  enough  to  be  conscious  of  the 
connection  between  the  patriotic  affection  and  every  other 
affection  which  lifts  us  above  emigrating  rats  and  free-loving 
baboons,  will  be  disposed  to  say  Amen.  True,  we  are  not 
indebted  to  those  ancestors  for  our  religion ;  we  are  rather 
proud  of  having  got  that  illuminatiou  from  elsewhere.  The 


404 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


men  who  planted  our  nation  were  not  Christians,  though  they 
began  their  work  centuries  after  Christ,  and  they  had  a  de¬ 
cided  objection  to  Christianity  when  it  was  first  proposed  to 
them ;  they  were  not  monotheists,  and  their  religion  was  the 
reverse  of  spiritual.  But  since  we  have  been  fortunate 
enough  to  keep  the  island  home  they  won  for  us,  and  have 
been  on  the  whole  a  prosperous  people,  rather  continuing  the 
plan  of  invading  and  spoiling  other  lands  than  being  forced 
to  beg  for  shelter  in  them,  nobody  has  reproached  us  because 
our  fathers,  thirteen  hundred  years  ago,  worshipped  Odin, 
massacred  Britons,  and  were  with  difficulty  persuaded  to 
accept  Christianity,  knowing  nothing  of  Hebrew  history  and 
the  reasons  why  Christ  should  be  received  as  the  Saviour  of 
mankind.  The  Bed  Indians,  not  liking  us  when  we  settled 
among  them,  might  have  been  willing  to  fling  such  facts  in 
our  faces,  but  they  were  too  ignorant ;  and,  besides,  their 
opinions  did  not  signify,  because  we  were  able,  if  we  liked, 
to  exterminate  them.  The  Hindoos  also  have  doubtless  had 
their  rancors  against  us,  and  still  entertain  enough  ill-will  to 
make  unfavorable  remarks  on  our  character,  especially  as  to 
our  historic  rapacity  and  arrogant  notions  of  our  own  superi¬ 
ority.  They  perhaps  do  not  admire  the  usual  English  profile, 
and  they  are  not  converted  to  our  way  of  feeding ;  but  though 
we  are  a  small  number  of  an  alien  race,  profiting  by  the 
territory  and  produce  of  these  prejudiced  people,  they  are 
unable  to  turn  us  out ;  at  least,  when  they  tried,  we  showed 
them  their  mistake.  We  do  not  call  ourselves  a  dispersed 
and  a  punished  people  ;  we  are  a  colonizing  people,  and  it  is 
we  who  have  punished  others. 

Still,  the  historian  guides  us  rightly  in  urging  us  to  dwell 
on  the  virtues  of  our  ancestors  with  emulation,  and  to  cherish 
our  sense  of  a  common  descent  as  a  bond  of  obligation.  The 
eminence,  the  nobleness  of  a  people,  depends  on  its  capability 
of  being  stirred  by  memories,  and  for  striving  for  what  we 
call  spiritual  ends  —  ends  which  consist  not  in  an  immediate 
material  possession,  but  in  the  satisfaction  of  a  great  feeling 
that  animates  the  collective  body  as  with  one  soul.  A  people 


THE  MODERN  IIEP!  HEP!  HEP! 


405 


having  the  seed  of  worthiness  in  it  must  feel  an  answering 
thrill  when  it  is  adjured  by  the  deaths  of  its  heroes  who  died 
to  preserve  its  national  existence ;  when  it  is  reminded  of  its 
small  beginnings  and  gradual  growth  through  past  labors  and 
struggles,  such  as  are  still  demanded  of  it  in  order  that  the 
freedom  and  well-being  thus  inherited  may  be  transmitted 
unimpaired  to  children  and  children’s  children;  when  an 
appeal  against  the  permission  of  injustice  is  made  to  great 
precedents  in  its  history,  and  to  the  better  genius  breathing 
in  its  institutions.  It  is  this  living  force  of  sentiment  in 
common  which  makes  a  national  consciousness.  Nations  so 
moved  will  resist  conquest  with  the  very  breasts  of  their 
women,  will  pay  their  millions  and  their  blood  to  abolish 
slavery,  will  share  privation  in  famine  and  all  calamity,  will 
produce  poets  to  sing  “some  great  story  of  a  man,”  and 
thinkers  whose  theories  will  bear  the  test  of  action.  An  in¬ 
dividual  man,  to  be  harmoniously  great,  must  belong  to  a 
nation  of  this  order,  if  not  in  actual  existence  yet  existing  in 
the  past  —  in  memory,  as  a  departed,  invisible,  beloved  ideal, 
once  a  reality,  and  perhaps  to  be  restored.  A  common  hu¬ 
manity  is  not  yet  enough  to  feed  the  rich  blood  of  various 
activity  which  makes  a  complete  man.  The  time  is  not  come 
for  cosmopolitanism  to  be  highly  virtuous,  any  more  than  of 
communism  to  suffice  for  social  energy.  I  am  not  bound  to 
feel  for  a  Chinaman  as  I  feel  for  my  fellow-countryman  :  I 
am  bound  not  to  demoralize  him  with  opium,  not  to  compel 
him  to  my  will  by  destroying  or  plundering  the  fruits  of  his 
labor,  on  the  alleged  ground  that  he  is  not  cosmopolitan 
enough,  and  not  to  insult  him  for  his  want  of  my  tailoring 
and  religion  when  he  appears  as  a  peaceable  visitor  on  the 
London  pavement.  It  is  admirable  in  a  Briton  with  a  good 
purpose  to  learn  Chinese ;  but  it  would  not  be  a  proof  of  fine 
intellect  in  him  to  taste  Chinese  poetry  in  the  original  more 
than  he  tastes  the  poetry  of  his  own  tongue.  Affection,  in¬ 
telligence,  duty,  radiate  from  a  centre,  and  nature  has  decided 
that  for  us  English  folk  that  centre  can  be  neither  China  nor 
Peru.  Most  of  us  feel  this  unreflectingly,  for  the  affectation 


406 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


of  undervaluing  everything  native,  and  being  too  fine  for 
one’s  own  country,  belongs  only  to  a  few  minds  of  no  danger¬ 
ous  leverage.  What  is  wanting  is  that  we  should  recognize 
a  corresponding  attachment  to  nationality  as  legitimate  in 
every  other  people,  and  understand  that  its  absence  is  a  pri¬ 
vation  of  the  greatest  good. 

For,  to  repeat,  not  only  the  nobleness  of  a  nation  depends 
on  the  presence  of  this  national  consciousness,  but  also  the 
nobleness  of  each  individual  citizen.  Our  dignity  and  recti¬ 
tude  are  proportioned  to  our  sense  of  relationship  with  some¬ 
thing  great,  admirable,  pregnant  with  high  possibilities, 
worthy  of  sacrifice,  a  continual  inspiration  to  self -repression 
and  discipline  by  the  presentation  of  aims  larger  and  more 
attractive  to  our  generous  part  than  the  securing  of  personal 
ease  or  prosperity.  And  a  people  possessing  this  good  should 
surely  feel  not  only  a  ready  sympathy  with  the  effort  of  those 
who,  having  lost  the  good,  strive  to  regain  it,  but  a  profound 
pity  for  any  degradation  resulting  from  its  loss,  —  nay,  some¬ 
thing  more  than  pity  when  happier  nationalities  have  made 
victims  of  the  unfortunate  whose  memories,  nevertheless,  are 
the  very  fountain  to  which  the  persecutors  trace  their  most 
vaunted  blessings. 

These  notions  are  familiar ;  few  will  deny  them  in  the  ab¬ 
stract,  and  many  are  found  loudly  asserting  them  in  relation 
to  this  or  the  other  particular  case.  But  here  as  elsewhere, 
in  the  ardent  application  of  ideas,  there  is  a  notable  lack  of 
simple  comparison  or  sensibility  to  resemblance.  The  Euro¬ 
pean  world  has  long  been  used  to  consider  the  Jews  as  alto¬ 
gether  exceptional,  and  it  has  followed  naturally  enough  that 
they  have  been  excepted  from  the  rules  of  justice  and  mercy, 
which  are  based  on  human  likeness.  But  to  consider  a  people 
whose  ideas  have  determined  the  religion  of  half  the  world, 
and  that  the  more  cultivated  half,  and  who  made  the  most 
eminent  struggle  against  the  power  of  Borne,  as  a  purely 
exceptional  race,  is  a  demoralizing  offence  against  rational 
knowledge,  a  stultifying  inconsistency  in  historical  interpre¬ 
tation.  Every  nation  of  forcible  character,  i.  e.,  of  strongly 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEP!  HEP! 


407 


marked  characteristics,  is  so  far  exceptional.  The  distinctive 
note  of  each  bird-species  is  in  this  sense  exceptional,  but  the 
necessary  ground  of  such  distinction  is  a  deeper  likeness. 
The  superlative  peculiarity  in  the  J ews  admitted,  our  affinity 
with  them  is  only  the  more  apparent  when  the  elements  of 
their  peculiarity  are  discerned. 

From  whatever  point  of  view  the  writings  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  may  be  regarded,  the  picture  they  present  of  a  national 
development  is  of  high  interest  and  speciality ;  nor  can  their 
historic  momentousness  be  much  affected  by  any  varieties  of 
theory  as  to  the  relation  they  bear  to  the  New  Testament 
or  to  the  rise  and  constitution  of  Christianity.  Whether 
we  accept  the  canonical  Hebrew  books  as  a  revelation,  or 
simply  as  a  part  of  an  ancient  literature,  makes  no  difference 
to  the  fact  that  we  find  there  the  strongly  characterized  por¬ 
traiture  of  a  people  educated  from  an  earlier  or  later  period 
to  a  sense  of  separateness  unique  in  its  intensity  —  a  people 
taught  by  many  concurrent  influences  to  identify  faithfulness 
to  its  national  traditions  with  the  highest  social  and  religious 
blessings.  Our  too  scanty  sources  of  Jewish  history,  from 
the  return  under  Ezra  to  the  beginning  of  the  desperate  re¬ 
sistance  against  Rome,  show  us  the  heroic  and  triumphant 
struggle  of  the  Maccabees,  which  rescued  the  religion  and 
independence  of  the  nation  from  the  corrupting  sway  of  the 
Syrian  Greeks,  adding  to  the  glorious  sum  of  its  memorials, 
and  stimulating  continuous  efforts  of  a  more  peaceful  sort  to 
maintain  and  develop  that  national  life  which  the  heroes  had 
fought  and  died  for,  by  internal  measures  of  legal  administra¬ 
tion  and  public  teaching.  Thenceforth  the  virtuous  elements 
of  the  Jewish  life  were  engaged,  as  they  had  been  with  vary¬ 
ing  aspects  during  the  long  and  changeful  prophetic  period 
and  the  restoration  under  Ezra,  on  the  side  of  preserving  the 
specific  national  character  against  a  demoralizing  fusion  with 
that  of  foreigners  whose  religion  and  ritual  were  idolatrous 
and  often  obscene.  There  was  always  a  Foreign  party  reviling 
the  National  party  as  narrow,  and  sometimes  manifesting 
their  own  breadth  in  extensive  views  of  advancement  or  profit 


408 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


to  themselves  by  flattery  of  a  foreign  power.  Such  internal 
conflict  naturally  tightened  the  bands  of  conservatism,  which 
needed  to  be  strong  if  it  were  to  rescue  the  sacred  Ark,  the 
vital  spirit  of  a  small  nation  —  u  the  smallest  of  the  nations  ” 
—  whose  territory  lay  on  the  highway  between  three  conti¬ 
nents  5  and  when  the  dread  and  hatred  of  foreign  sway  had 
condensed  itself  into  dread  and  hatred  of  the  Romans,  many 
Conservatives  became  Zealots,  whose  chief  mark  was  that  they 
advocated  resistance  to  the  death  against  the  submergence 
of  their  nationality.  Much  might  be  said  on  this  point 
toward  distinguishing  the  desperate  struggle  against  a  con¬ 
quest  which  is  regarded  as  degradation  and  corruption,  from 
rash,  hopeless  insurrection  against  an  established  native  gov¬ 
ernment  ;  and  for  my  part  (if  that  were  of  any  consequence) 
I  share  the  spirit  of  the  Zealots.  I  take  the  spectacle  of  the 
Jewish  people  defying  the  Roman  edict,  and  preferring  death, 
by  starvation  or  the  sword  to  the  introduction  of  Caligula’s 
deified  statue  into  the  temple,  as  a  sublime  type  of  steadfast¬ 
ness.  But  all  that  need  be  noticed  here  is  the  continuity  of 
that  national  education  (by  outward  and  inward  circumstance) 
which  created  in  the  Jews  a  feeling  of  race,  a  sense  of  coiqx> 
rate  existence,  unique  in  its  intensity. 

But  not,  before  the  dispersion,  unique  in  essential  qualities, 
There  is  more  likeness  than  contrast  between  the  way  we 
English  got  our  island  and  the  way  the  Israelites  got  Canaan. 
We  have  not  been  noted  for  forming  a  low  estimate  of  our¬ 
selves  in  comparison  with  foreigners,  or  for  admitting  that 
our  institutions  are  equalled  by  those  of  any  other  people 
under  the  sun.  Many  of  us  have  thought  that  our  sea-wall  is 
a  specially  divine  arrangement  to  make  and  keep  us  a  nation 
of  sea-kings  after  the  manner  of  our  forefathers,  secure  against 
invasion,  and  able  to  invade  other  lands  when  we  need  them, 
though  they  may  lie  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean.  Again,  it 
has  been  held  that  we  have  a  peculiar  destiny  as  a  Protestant 
people,  not  only  able  to  bruise  the  head  of  an  idolatrous 
Christianity  in  the  midst  of  us,  but  fitted,  as  possessors  of  the 
most  truth  and  the  most  tonnage,  to  carry  our  purer  religion 


THE  MODERN  HEP  I  HEP!  HEP! 


409 


over  the  world  and  convert  mankind  to  our  way  of  thinking. 
The  Puritans,  asserting  their  liberty  to  restrain  tyrants,  found 
the  Hebrew  history  closely  symbolical  of  their  feelings  and 
purpose ;  and  it  can  hardly  be  correct  to  cast  the  blame  of 
their  less  laudable  doings  on  the  writings  they  invoked,  since 
their  opponents  made  use  of  the  same  writings  for  different 
ends,  finding  there  a  strong  warrant  for  the  divine  right  of 
kings  and  the  denunciation  of  those  who,  like  Korali,  Dathan, 
and  Abiram,  took  on  themselves  the  office  of  the  priesthood, 
which  belonged  of  right  solely  to  Aaron  and  his  sons,  or,  in 
other  words,  to  men  ordained  by  the  English  bishops.  We 
must  rather  refer  the  passionate  use  of  the  Hebrew  writings 
to  affinities  of  disposition  between  our  own  race  and  the  Jew¬ 
ish.  Is  it  true  that  the  arrogance  of  a  Jew  was  so  immeasur¬ 
ably  beyond  that  of  a  Calvinist  ?  And  the  just  sympathy 
and  admiration  which  we  give  to  the  ancestors  who  resisted 
the  oppressive  acts  of  our  native  kings,  and  by  resisting  res¬ 
cued  or  won  for  us  the  best  part  of  our  civil  and  religious 
liberties  —  is  it  justly  to  be  withheld  from  those  brave  and 
steadfast  men  of  Jewish  race  who  fought  and  died,  or  strove 
by  wise  administration  to  resist,  the  oppression  and  corrupt¬ 
ing  influences  of  foreign  tyrants,  and  by  resisting,  rescued 
the  nationality  which  was  the  very  hearth  of  our  own  relig¬ 
ion  ?  At  any  rate,  seeing  that  the  Jews  were  more  specifi¬ 
cally  than  any  other  nation  educated  into  a  sense  of  their 
supreme  moral  value,  the  chief  matter  of  surprise  is  that 
any  other  nation  is  found  to  rival  them  in  this  form  of  self- 
confidence. 

More  exceptional  —  less  like  the  course  of  our  own  history 
—  has  been  their  dispersion  and  their  subsistence  as  a  sepa¬ 
rate  people  through  ages  in  which,  for  the  most  part,  they 
were  regarded  and  treated  very  much  as  beasts  hunted  for 
the  sake  of  their  skins,  or  of  a  valuable  secretion  peculiar  to 
their  species.  The  Jews  showed  a  talent  for  accumulating 
what  was  an  object  of  more  immediate  desire  to  Christians 
than  animal  oils  or  well-furred  skins,  and  their  cupidity  and 
avarice  were  found  at  once  particularly  hateful  and  particu 


410 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


larly  useful :  hateful  when  seen  as  a  reason  for  punishing 
them  by  mulcting  or  robbery ;  useful  when  this  retributive 
process  could  be  successfully  carried  forward.  Kings  and 
emperors  naturally  were  more  alive  to  the  usefulness  of  sub¬ 
jects  who  could  gather  and  yield  money ;  but  edicts  issued  to 
protect  “the  King’s  Jews”  equally  with  the  King’s  game 
from  being  harassed  and  hunted  by  the  commonalty,  were 
only  slight  mitigations  to  the  deplorable  lot  of  a  race  held 
to  be  under  the  divine  curse,  and  had  little  force  after  the 
Crusades  began.  As  the  slaveholders  in  the  United  States 
counted  the  curse  on  Ham  a  justification  of  negro  slavery, 
so  the  curse  on  the  Jews  was  counted  a  justification  for  hin¬ 
dering  them  from  pursuing  agriculture  and  handicrafts ;  for 
marking  them  out  as  execrable  figures  by  a  peculiar  dress ; 
for  torturing  them  to  make  them  part  with  their  gains,  or 
for  more  gratuitously  spitting  at  them  and  pelting  them  ;  for 
taking  it  as  certain  that  they  killed  and  ate  babies,  poisoned 
the  wells,  and  took  pains  to  spread  the  plague ;  for  putting 
it  to  them  whether  they  would  be  baptized  or  burned,  and 
not  failing  to  burn  and  massacre  them  when  they  were  obsti¬ 
nate  ;  but  also  for  suspecting  them  of  disliking  the  baptism 
when  they  had  got  it,  and  then  burning  them  in  punishment 
of  their  insincerity ;  finally,  for  hounding  them  by  tens  on 
tens  of  thousands  from  the  homes  where  they  had  found 
shelter  for  centuries,  and  inflicting  on  them  the  horrors  of  a 
new  exile  and  a  new  dispersion.  All  this  to  avenge  the 
Saviour  of  mankind,  or  else  to  compel  these  stiff-necked 
people  to  acknowledge  a  Master  whose  servants  showed  such 
beneficent  effects  of  his  teaching. 

With  a  people  so  treated,  one  of  two  issues  was  possible: 
either  from  being  of  feebler  nature  than  their  persecutors, 
and  caring  more  for  ease  than  for  the  sentiments  and  ideas 
which  constituted  their  distinctive  character,  they  would 
everywhere  give  way  to  pressure  and  get  rapidly  merged  in 
the  populations  around  them ;  or  being  endowed  with  un¬ 
common  tenacity,  physical  and  mental,  feeling  peculiarly  the 
ties  of  inheritance  both  in  blood  and  faith,  remembering  na- 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEP!  IIEP! 


411 


tional  glories,  trusting  in  tlieir  recovery,  abhorring  apostasy, 
able  to  bear  all  things  and  hope  all  things  with  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  being  steadfast  to  spiritual  obligations,  the  kernel  of 
their  number  would  harden  into  an  inflexibility  more  and 
more  insured  by  motive  and  habit.  They  would  cherish  all 
differences  that  marked  them  off  from  their  hated  oppressors, 
all  memories  that  consoled  them  with  a  sense  of  virtual 
though  unrecognized  superiority ;  and  the  separateness  which 
was  made  their  badge  of  ignominy  would  be  their  inward 
pride,  their  source  of  fortifying  defiance.  Doubtless  such  a 
people  would  get  confirmed  in  vices.  An  oppressive  govern¬ 
ment  and  a  persecuting  religion,  while  breeding  vices  in 
those  who  hold  power,  are  well  known  to  breed  answering 
vices  in  those  who  are  powerless  and  suffering.  What  more 
direct  plan  than  the  course  presented  by  European  history 
could  have  been  pursued  in  order  to  give  the  Jews  a  spirit  of 
bitter  isolation,  and  scorn  for  the  wolfish  hypocrisy  that  made 
victims  of  them,  of  triumph  in  prospering  at  the  expense  of 
the  blunderers  who  stoned  them  away  from  the  open  paths 
of  industry ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  encourage  in  the  less 
defiant  a  lying  conformity,  a  pretence  of  conversion  for  the 
sake  of  the  social  advantages  attached  to  baptism,  an  out¬ 
ward  renunciation  of  their  hereditary  ties,  with  the  lack  of 
real  love  toward  the  society  and  creed  which  exacted  this 
galling  tribute  ;  or  again,  in  the  most  unhappy  specimens 
of  the  race,  to  rear  transcendent  examples  of  odious  vice, 
reckless  instruments  of  rich  men  with  bad  propensities, 
unscrupulous  grinders  of  alien  people  who  wanted  to  grind 
them  ? 

No  wonder  the  Jews  have  their  vices ;  no  wonder  if  it 
were  proved  (which  it  has  not  hitherto  appeared  to  be)  that 
some  of  them  have  a  bad  pre-eminence  in  evil,  an  unrivalled 
superfluity  of  naughtiness.  It  would  be  more  plausible  to 
make  a  wonder  of  the  virtues  which  have  prospered  among 
them  under  the  shadow  of  oppression.  But  instead  of  dwell¬ 
ing  on  these,  or  treating  as  admitted  what  any  hardy  or 
ignorant  person  may  deny,  let  us  found  simply  on  the  loud 


412 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


assertions  of  the  hostile.  The  Jews,  it  is  said,  resisted  the 
expansion  of  their  own  religion  into  Christianity  ;  they  were 
in  the  habit  of  spitting  on  the  cross  ;  they  have  held  the  name 
of  Christ  to  be  Anathema.  Who  taught  them  that  ?  The 
men  who  made  Christianity  a  curse  to  them ;  the  men  who 
made  the  name  of  Christ  a  symbol  for  the  spirit  of  vengeance, 
and,  what  was  worse,  made  the  execution  of  the  vengeance  a 
pretext  for  satisfying  their  own  savageness,  greed,  and  envy ; 
the  men  who  sanctioned  with  the  name  of  Christ  a  barbaric 
and  blundering  copy  of  Pagan  fatalism,  in  taking  the  words 
“  His  blood  be  upon  us  and  on  our  children  ”  as  a  divinely 
appointed  verbal  warrant  for  wreaking  cruelty,  from  genera¬ 
tion  to  generation,  on  the  people  from  whose  sacred  writings 
Christ  drew  his  teaching.  Strange  retrogression  in  the  pro¬ 
fessors  of  an  expanded  religion,  boasting  an  illumination 
beyond  the  spiritual  doctrine  of  Hebrew  prophets !  For 
Hebrew  prophets  proclaimed  a  God  who  demanded  mercy 
rather  than  sacrifices.  The  Christians  also  believed  that  God 
delighted  not  in  the  blood  of  rams  and  of  bulls,  but  they 
apparently  conceived  him  as  requiring  for  his  satisfaction  the 
sighs  and  groans,  the  blood  and  roasted  flesh,  of  men  whose 
forefathers  had  misunderstood  the  metaphorical  character  of 
prophecies  which  spoke  of  spiritual  pre-eminence  under  the 
figure  of  a  material  kingdom.  Was  this  the  method  by 
which  Christ  desired  his  title  to  the  Messiahship  to  be  com¬ 
mended  to  the  nation  in  which  he  was  born  ?  Many  of  his 
sayings  bear  the  stamp  of  that  patriotism  which  places 
fellow-countrymen  in  the  inner  circle  of  affection  and  duty. 
And  did  the  words  “Father,  forgive  them,  they  know  not 
what  they  do,”  refer  only  to  the  centurion  and  his  band,  a 
tacit  exception  being  made  of  every  Hebrew  there  present 
from  the  mercy  of  the  Father  and  the  compassion  of  the 
Son,  —  nay,  more,  of  every  Hebrew  yet  to  come,  who  re¬ 
mained  unconverted  after  hearing  of  his  claim  to  the  Mes¬ 
siahship,  not  from  his  own  lips  or  those  of  his  native  apostles, 
but  from  the  lips  of  alien  men,  whom  cross,  creed,  and  bap¬ 
tism  had  left  cruel,  rapacious,  and  debauched  9  It  is  more 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEP!  HEP! 


413 


reverent  to  Christ  to  believe  that  he  must  have  approved  the 
Jewish  martyrs  who  deliberately  chose  to  be  burned  or 
massacred  rather  than  be  guilty  of  a  blaspheming  lie,  more 
than  he  approved  the  rabble  of  Crusaders  who  robbed  and 
murdered  them  in  his  name. 

But  these  remonstrances  seem  to  have  no  direct  applica¬ 
tion  to  personages  who  take  up  the  attitude  of  philosophic 
thinkers  and  discriminating  critics,  professedly  accepting 
Christianity  from  a  rational  point  of  view,  as  a  vehicle  of  the 
highest  religious  and  moral  truth,  and  condemning  the  Jews 
on  the  ground  that  they  are  obstinate  adherents  of  an  out¬ 
worn  creed,  maintain  themselves  in  moral  alienation  from  the 
peoples  with  whom  they  share  citizenship,  and  are  destitute 
of  real  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the  community  and  state 
with  which  they  are  thus  identified.  These  anti- Judaic 
advocates  usually  belong  to  a  party  which  has  felt  itself 
glorified  in  winning  for  Jews,  as  well  as  Dissenters  and 
Catholics,  the  full  privileges  of  citizenship,  laying  open  to 
them  every  path  to  distinction.  At  one  time  the  voice  of 
this  party  urged  that  differences  of  creed  were  made  danger¬ 
ous  only  by  the  denial  of  citizenship,  that  you  must  make 
a  man  a  citizen  before  he  could  feel  like  one.  At  present, 
apparently,  this  confidence  has  been  succeeded  by  a  sense  of 
mistake ;  there  is  a  regret  that  no  limiting  clauses  were  in¬ 
sisted  on,  such  as  would  have  hindered  the  Jews  from  coming 
too  far  and  in  too  large  proportion  along  those  opened 
pathways ;  and  the  Roumanians  are  thought  to  have  shown 
an  enviable  wisdom  in  giving  them  as  little  chance  as  possible. 
But  then  the  reflection  occurring  that  some  of  the  most 
objectionable  Jews  are  baptized  Christians,  it  is  obvious  that 
such  clauses  would  have  been  insufficient,  and  the  doctrine 
that  you  can  turn  a  Jew  into  a  good  Christian  is’ emphatically 
retracted.  But,  clearly,  these  liberal  gentlemen,  too  late 
enlightened  by  disagreeable  events,  must  yield  the  palm  of 
wise  foresight  to  those  who  argued  against  them  long  ago ; 
and  it  is  a  striking  spectacle  to  witness  minds  so  panting  for 
advancement  in  some  directions  that  they  are  ready  to  force 


414 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


it  on  an  unwilling  society,  in  this  instance  despairingly 
recurring  to  mediseval  types  of  thinking  —  insisting  that  the 
Jews  are  made  viciously  cosmopolitan  by  holding  the  world’s 
money-bag ;  that  for  them  all  national  interests  are  resolved 
into  the  algebra  of  loans  ;  that  they  have  suffered  an  inward 
degradation  stamping  them  as  morally  inferior,  and  —  “  serve 
them  right,”  since  they  rejected  Christianity.  All  which  is 
mirrored  in  an  analogy,  namely,  that  of  the  Irish,  also  a  ser¬ 
vile  race,  who  have  rejected  Protestantism,  though  it  has 
been  repeatedly  urged  on  them  by  fire  and  sword  and  penal 
laws,  and  whose  place  in  the  moral  scale  may  be  judged  by 
our  advertisements,  where  the  clause,  “No  Irish  need  ap¬ 
ply,”  parallels  the  sentence  which  for  many  polite  persons 
sums  up  the  question  of  Judaism,  “I  never  did  like  the 
Jews.” 

It  is  certainly  worth  considering  whether  an  expatriated, 
denationalized  race,  used  for  ages  to  live  among  antipathetic 
populations,  must  not  inevitably  lack  some  conditions  of 
nobleness.  If  they  drop  that  separateness  which  is  made 
their  reproach,  they  may  be  in  danger  of  lapsing  into  a  cos¬ 
mopolitan  indifference  equivalent  to  cynicism,  and  of  missing 
that  inward  identification  with  the  nationality  immediately 
around  them  which  might  make  some  amends  for  their  inher¬ 
ited  privation.  No  dispassionate  observer  can  deny  this 
danger.  Why,  our  own  countrymen  who  take  to  living 
abroad,  without  purpose  or  function  to  keep  up  their  sense  of 
fellowship  in  the  affairs  of  their  own  land,  are  rarely  good 
specimens  of  moral  healthiness ;  still,  the  consciousness  of 
having  a  native  country,  the  birthplace  of  common  memories 
and  habits  of  mind,  existing  like  a  parental  hearth  quitted 
but  beloved ;  the  dignity  of  being  included  in  a  people  which 
has  a  part  in  the  comity  of  nations  and  the  growing  federa¬ 
tion  of  the  world ;  that  sense  of  special  belonging  which  is 
the  root  of  human  virtues,  both  public  and  private,  —  all 
these  spiritual  links  may  preserve  migratory  Englishmen 
from  the  worst  consequences  of  their  voluntary  dispersion. 
Unquestionably  the  Jews,  having  been  more  than  any  othei 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEP!  HEP  I 


415 


.face  exposed  to  the  adverse  moral  influences  of  alienism, 
must,  both  in  individuals  and  in  groups,  have  suffered  some 
corresponding  moral  degradation ;  but  in  fact  they  have  es¬ 
caped  with  less  of  abjectness,  and  less  of  hard  hostility 
toward  the  nations  whose  hand  has  been  against  them,  than 
could  have  happened  in  the  case  of  a  people  who  had  neither 
their  adhesion  to  a  separate  religion  founded  on  historic 
memories,  nor  their  characteristic  family  affectionateness. 
Tortured,  flogged,  spit  upon,  the  corpus  vile  on  which  rage  or 
wantonness  vented  themselves  with  impunity,  their  name 
flung  at  them  as  an  opprobrium  by  superstition,  hatred,  and 
contempt,  they  have  remained  proud  of  their  origin.  Does 
any  one  call  this  an  evil  pride  ?  Perhaps  he  belongs  to  that 
order  of  man  who,  while  he  has  a  democratic  dislike  to  dukes 
and  earls,  wants  to  make  believe  that  his  father  was  an  idle 
gentleman,  when  in  fact  he  was  an  honorable  artisan,  or  who 
would  feel  flattered  to  be  taken  for  other  than  an  English¬ 
man.  It  is  possible  to  be  too  arrogant  about  our  blood  or  our 
calling,  but  that  arrogance  is  virtue  compared  with  such 
mean  pretence.  The  pride  which  identifies  us  with  a  great 
historic  body  is  a  humanizing,  elevating  habit  of  mind,  in¬ 
spiring  sacrifices  of  individual  comfort,  gain,  or  other  selfish 
ambition,  for  the  sake  of  that  ideal  whole;  and  no  man 
swayed  by  such  a  sentiment  can  become  completely  abject. 
That  a  Jew  of  Smyrna,  where  a  whip  is  carried  by  passengers 
ready  to  flog  off  the  too  officious  specimens  of  his  race,  can 
still  be  proud  to  say  “  I  am  a  Jew,”  is  surely  a  fact  to  awaken 
admiration  in  a  mind  capable  of  understanding  what  we  may 
call  the  ideal  forces  in  human  history.  And  again,  a  varied, 
impartial  observation  of  the  Jews  in  different  countries  tends 
to  the  impression  that  they  have  a  predominant  kindliness 
which  must  have  been  deeply  ingrained  in  the  constitution  of 
their  race  to  have  outlasted  the  ages  of  persecution  and  op¬ 
pression.  The  concentration  of  their  joys  in  domestic  life 
has  kept  up  in  them  the  capacity  of  tenderness ;  the  pity  for 
the  fatherless  and  the  widow,  the  care  for  the  women  and 
the  little  ones,  blent  intimately  with  their  religion,  is  a  well 


416 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


of  mercy  that  cannot  long  or  widely  be  pent  up  by  exclusive¬ 
ness.  And  the  kindliness  of  the  Jew  overflows  the  line  of 
division  between  him  and  the  Gentile.  On  the  whole,  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  phenomena  in  the  history  of  this  scattered 
people,  made  for  ages  “  a  scorn  and  a  hissing,”  is,  that  after 
being  subjected  to  this  process,  which  might  have  been  ex¬ 
pected  to  be  in  every  sense  deteriorating  and  vitiating,  they 
have  come  out  of  it  (in  any  estimate  which  allows  for  numer¬ 
ical  proportion)  rivalling  the  nations  of  all  European  coun¬ 
tries  in  healthiness  and  beauty  of  physique,  in  practical 
ability,  in  scientific  and  artistic  aptitude,  and  in  some  forms 
of  ethical  value.  A  significant  indication  of  their  natural 
rank  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  at  this  moment  the  leader  of  the 
Liberal  party  in  Germany  is  a  Jew,  the  leader  of  the  Repub¬ 
lican  party  in  France  is  a  Jew,  and  the  head  of  the  Conserva¬ 
tive  ministry  in  England  is  a  Jew. 

And  here  it  is  that  we  find  the  ground  for  the  obvious 
jealousy  which  is  now  stimulating  the  revived  expression  of 
old  antipathies.  “The  Jews,”  it  is  felt,  “have  a  dangerous 
tendency  to  get  the  uppermost  places,  not  only  in  commerce 
but  in  political  life.  Their  monetary  hold  on  governments  is 
tending  to  perpetuate  in  leading  Jews  a  spirit  of  universal 
alienism  (euphemistically  called  cosmopolitanism),  even  where 
the  West  has  given  them  a  full  share  in  civil  and  political 
rights.  A  people  with  Oriental  sunlight  in  their  blood,  yet 
capable  of  being  everywhere  acclimatized,  they  have  a  force 
and  toughness  which  enables  them  to  carry  off  the  best 
prizes ;  and  their  wealth  is  likely  to  put  half  the  seats  in 
Parliament  at  their  disposal.” 

There  is  truth  in  these  views  of  Jewish  social  and  political 
relations  ;  but  it  is  rather  too  late  for  Liberal  pleaders  to  urge 
them  in  a  merely  vituperative  sense.  Do  they  propose,  as  a 
remedy  for  the  impending  danger  of  our  healthier  national 
influences  getting  overridden  by  Jewish  predominance,  that 
we  should  repeal  our  emancipatory  laws  ?  Not  all  the  Ger¬ 
manic  immigrants  who  have  been  settling  among  us  for  gen¬ 
erations,  and  are  still  pouring  in  to  settle,  are  Jews,  but 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEP!  HEP! 


417 


thoroughly  Teutonic  and  more  or  less  Christian  craftsmen, 
mechanicians,  or  skilled  and  erudite  functionaries;  and  the 
Semitic  Christians  who  swarm  among  us  are  dangerously  like 
their  unconverted  brethren  in  complexion,  persistence,  and 
wealth.  Then  there  are  the  Greeks,  who,  by  the  help  of 
Phoenician  blood  or  otherwise,  are  objectionably  strong  in  the 
city.  Some  judges  think  that  the  Scotch  are  more  numerous 
and  prosperous  here  in  the  South  than  is  quite  for  the  good 
of  us  Southerners ;  and  the  early  inconvenience  felt  under 
the  Stuarts,  of  being  quartered  upon  by  a  hungry,  hard-work¬ 
ing  people,  with  a  distinctive  accent  and  form  of  religion,  and 
higher  cheek-bones  than  English  taste  requires,  has  not  yet 
been  quite  neutralized.  As  for  the  Irish,  it  is  felt  in  high 
quarters  that  we  have  alwav^s  been  too  lenient  toward  them ; 
at  least  if  they  had  been  harried  a  little  more,  there  might 
not  have  been  so  many  of  them  on  the  English  press,  of 
which  they  divide  the  power  with  the  Scotch,  thus  driving 
many  Englishmen  to  honest  and  ineloquent  labor. 

So  far  shall  we  be  carried  if  we  go  in  search  of  devices  to 
hinder  people  of  other  blood  than  our  own  from  getting  the 
advantage  of  dwelling  among  us. 

Let  it  be  admitted  that  it  is  a  calamity  to  the  English,  as 
to  any  other  great  historic  people,  to  undergo  a  premature 
fusion  with  immigrants  of  alien  blood,  —  that  its  distinctive 
national  characteristics  should  be  in  danger  of  obliteration  by 
the  predominating  quality  of  foreign  settlers.  I  not  only 
admit  this ;  I  am  ready  to  unite  in  groaning  over  the  threat¬ 
ened  danger.  To  one  who  loves  his  native  language,  who 
would  delight  to  keep  our  rich  and  harmonious  English  un¬ 
defiled  by  foreign  accent,  and  those  foreign  tinctures  of 
verbal  meaning  which  tend  to  confuse  all  writing  and  dis¬ 
course,  it  is  an  affliction  as  harassing  as  the  climate,  that  on 
our  stage,  in  our  studies,  at  our  public  and  private  gatherings, 
in  our  offices,  warehouses,  and  workshops,  we  must  expect  to 
hear  our  beloved  English,  with  its  words  clipped,  its  vowels 
stretched  and  twisted,  its  phrases  of  acquiescence  and  polite¬ 
ness,  of  cordiality,  dissidence,  or  argument,  delivered  always 


TOL.  IX. 


418 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


in  the  wrong  tones,  like  ill-rendered  melodies,  marred  beyond 
recognition,  —  that  there  should  be  a  general  ambition  to  speak 
every  language  except  our  mother  English,  which  persons  “  of 
style  ”  are  not  ashamed  of  corrupting  with  slang,  false  for¬ 
eign  equivalents,  and  a  pronunciation  that  crushes  out  all  color 
from  the  vowels  and  jams  them  between  jostling  consonants. 
An  ancient  Greek  might  not  like  to  be  resuscitated  for  the 
sake  of  hearing  Homer  read  in  our  universities ;  still  he  would 
at  least  find  more  instructive  marvels  in  other  developments 
to  be  witnessed  at  those  institutions ;  but  a  modern  English¬ 
man  is  invited  from  his  after-dinner  repose  to  hear  Shak- 
speare  delivered  under  circumstances  which  offer  no  other 
novelty  than  some  novelty  of  false  intonation,  some  new  dis¬ 
tribution  of  strong  emphasis  on  prepositions,  some  new  mis¬ 
conception  of  a  familiar  idiom.  Well,  it  is  our  inertness  that 
is  in  fault,  our  carelessness  of  excellence,  our  willing  igno¬ 
rance  of  the  treasures  that  lie  in  our  national  heritage,  while 
we  are  agape  after  what  is  foreign,  though  it  may  be  only  a 
vile  imitation  of  what  is  native. 

This  marring  of  our  speech,  however,  is  a  minor  evil  com¬ 
pared  with  what  must  follow  from  the  predominance  of 
wealth-acquiring  immigrants,  whose  appreciation  of  our  po¬ 
litical  and  social  life  must  often  be  as  approximative  or 
fatally  erroneous  as  their  delivery  of  our  language.  But  take 
the  worst  issues,  what  can  we  do  to  hinder  them  ?  Are  we 
to  adopt  the  exclusiveness  for  which  we  have  punished  the 
Chinese  ?  Are  we  to  tear  the  glorious  flag  of  hospitality 
which  has  made  our  freedom  the  world-wide  blessing  of  the 
oppressed  ?  It  is  not  agreeable  to  find  foreign  accents  and 
stumbling  locutions  passing  from  the  piquant  exception  to 
the  general  rule  of  discourse.  But  to  urge  on  that  account 
that  we  should  spike  away  the  peaceful  foreigner,  would  be  a 
view  of  international  relations  not  in  the  long  run  favorable 
to  the  interests  of  our  fellow-countrymen  ;  for  we  are  at  least 
equal  to  the  races  we  call  obtrusive  in  the  disposition  to  set¬ 
tle  wherever  money  is  to  be  made  and  cheaply  idle  living  to 
be  found.  In  meeting  the  national  evils  which  are  brought 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEn  HEP! 


419 


upon  us  by  the  onward  course  of  the  world,  there  is  often  no 
more  immediate  hope  or  resource  than  that  of  striving  after 
fuller  national  excellence,  which  must  consist  in  the  mould¬ 
ing  of  more  excellent  individual  natives.  The  tendency  of 
things  is  toward  the  quicker  or  slower  fusion  of  races.  It  is 
impossible  to  arrest  this  tendency :  all  we  can  do  is  to  mod¬ 
erate  its  course,  so  as  to  hinder  it  from  degrading  the  moral 
status  of  societies  by  a  too  rapid  effacement  of  those  national 
traditions  and  customs  which  are  the  language  of  the  national 
genius,  the  deep  suckers  of  healthy  sentiment.  Such  mod¬ 
erating  and  guidance  of  inevitable  movement  is  worthy  of  all 
effort.  And  it  is  in  this  sense  that  the  modern  insistence  on 
the  idea  of  nationalities  has  value.  That  any  people,  at  once 
distinct  and  coherent  enough  to  form  a  state,  should  be  held 
in  subjection  by  an  alien  antipathetic  government,  has  been 
becoming  more  and  more  a  ground  of  sympathetic  indigna¬ 
tion  ;  and,  in  virtue  of  this,  at  least  one  great  state  has  been 
added  to  European  councils.  Nobody  now  complains  of  the 
result  in  this  case,  though  far-sighted  persons  see  the  need  to 
limit  analogy  by  discrimination.  We  have  to  consider  who 
are  the  stifled  people  and  who  the  stifle rs,  before  we  can  be 
sure  of  our  ground.  The  only  point  in  this  connection  on 
which  Englishmen  are  agreed  is,  that  England  itself  shall  not 
be  subject  to  foreign  rule.  The  fiery  resolve  to  resist  inva¬ 
sion,  though  with  an  improvised  array  of  pitchforks,  is  felt 
to  be  virtuous,  and  to  be  worthy  of  a  historic  people.  Why  ? 
Because  there  is  a  national  life  in  our  veins.  Because  there 
is  something  specifically  English  which  we  feel  to  be  su¬ 
premely  worth  striving  for,  worth  dying  for,  rather  than  liv¬ 
ing  to  renounce  it.  Because  we  too  have  our  share  —  perhaps 
a  principal  share  —  in  that  spirit  of  separateness  which  has 
not  yet  done  its  work  in  the  education  of  mankind,  which  has 
created  the  varying  genius  of  nations,  and,  like  the  Muses,  is 
the  offspring  of  memory. 

Here,  as  everywhere  else,  the  human  task  seems  to  ne  the 
discerning  and  adjustment  of  opposite  claims.  But  one  end 
can  hardly  be  achieved  by  urging  contradictory  reproaches. 


420 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


and,  instead  of  laboring  after  discernment  as  a  preliminary  to 
intervention,  letting  our  zeal  burst  forth  according  to  a  ca¬ 
pricious  selection,  first  determined  accidentally,  and  after 
ward  justified  by  personal  predilection.  Not  only  John 
Gilpin  and  his  wife,  or  Edwin  and  Angelina,  seem  to  be  of 
opinion  that  their  preference  or  dislike  of  Russians,  Servians, 
or  Greeks,  consequent,  perhaps,  on  hotel  adventures,  has  some¬ 
thing  to  do  with  the  merits  of  the  Eastern  Question ;  even  in 
a  higher  range  of  intellect  and  enthusiasm  we  find  a  distribu¬ 
tion  of  sympathy  or  pity  for  sufferers  of  different  blood  or 
votaries  of  different  religions,  strangely  unaccountable  on  any 
other  ground  than  a  fortuitous  direction  of  study  or  trivial 
circumstances  of  travel.  With  some  even  admirable  persons 
one  is  never  quite  sure  of  any  particular  being  included  under 
a  general  term.  A  provincial  physician,  it  is  said,  once  or¬ 
dering  a  lady  patient  not  to  eat  salad,  was  asked  pleadingly 
by  the  affectionate  husband  whether  she  might  eat  lettuce,  oi 
cresses,  or  radishes.  The  physician  had  too  rashly  believed 
in  the  comprehensiveness  of  the  word  “salad,”  just  as  we, 
if  not  enlightened  by  experience,  might  believe  in  the  all- 
embracing  breadth  of  “sympathy  with  the  injured  and  op¬ 
pressed.”  What  mind  can  exhaust  the  grounds  of  exception 
which  lie  in  each  particular  case  ?  There  is  understood  to 
be  a  peculiar  odor  from  the  negro  body,  and  we  know  that 
some  persons,  too  rationalistic  to  feel  bound  by  the  curse  on 
Ham,  used  to  hint  very  strongly  that  this  odor  determined 
the  question  on  the  side  of  negro  slavery. 

And  this  is  the  usual  level  of  thinking  in  polite  society 
concerning  the  Jews.  Apart  from  theological  purposes,  it 
seems  to  be  held  surprising  that  anybody  should  take  an  in¬ 
terest  in  the  history  of  a  people  whose  literature  has  furnished 
all  our  devotional  language ;  and  if  any  reference  is  made  to 
their  past  or  future  destinies,  some  hearer  is  sure  to  state,  as 
a  relevant  fact  which  may  assist  our  judgment,  that  she,  for 
her  part,  is  not  fond  of  them,  having  known  a  Mr.  Jacobson 
who  was  very  unpleasant,  or  that  he,  for  his  part,  thinks 
meanly  of  them  as  a  race,  though,  on  inquiry,  you  find  that 


THE  MODERN  HER!  HEP'  HER] 


421 


he  is  so  little  acquainted  with  their  characteristics  that  he  is 
astonished  to  learn  how  many  persons  whom  lie  has  blindly 
admired  and  applauded  are  Jews  to  the  backbone.  Again, 
men  who  consider  themselves  in  the  very  van  of  modern  ad¬ 
vancement,  knowing  history  and  the  latest  philosophies  of 
history,  indicate  their  contemptuous  surprise  that  any  one 
should  entertain  the  destiny  of  the  Jews  as  a  worthy  subject, 
by  referring  to  Moloch,  and  their  own  agreement  with  the 
theory  that  the  religion  of  Jehovah  was  merely  a  transformed 
Moloch-worship,  while  in  the  same  breath  they  are  glorifying 
“civilization”  as  a  transformed  tribal  existence  of  which 
some  lineaments  are  traceable  in  grim  marriage  customs  of  the 
native  Australians.  Are  these  erudite  persons  prepared  to 
insist  that  the  name  “  Father  ”  should  no  longer  have  any 
sanctity  for  us,  because  in  their  view  of  likelihood  our  Aryan 
ancestors  were  mere  improvers  on  a  state  of  things  in  which 
nobody  knew  his  own  father  ? 

For  less  theoretic  men,  ambitious  to  be  regarded  as  practi¬ 
cal  politicians,  the  value  of  the  Hebrew  race  has  been  meas¬ 
ured  by  their  unfavorable  opinion  of  a  prime  minister  who  is 
a  Jew  by  lineage.  But  it  is  possible  to  form  a  very  ugly 
opinion  as  to  the  scrupulousness  of  Walpole  or  of  Chatham ; 
and  in  any  case  I  think  Englishmen  would  refuse  to  accept 
the  character  and  doings  of  those  eighteenth-century  states¬ 
men  as  the  standard  of  value  for  the  English  people  and  the 
part  they  have  to  play  in  the  fortunes  of  mankind. 

If  we  are  to  consider  the  future  of  the  Jews  at  all,  it  seems 
reasonable  to  take,  as  a  preliminary  question,  Are  they  des¬ 
tined  to  complete  fusion  with  the  peoples  among  whom  they 
are  dispersed,  losing  every  remnant  of  a  distinctive  conscious¬ 
ness  as  Jews  ?  or,  Are  there  in  the  breadth  and  intensity  with 
which  the  feeling  of  separateness,  or  what  we  may  call  the 
organized  memory  of  a  national  consciousness,  actually  exists 
in  the  world-wide  Jewish  communities  —  the  seven  millions 
scattered  from  the  east  to  west  ?  and  again,  Are  there,  in 
the  political  relations  of  the  world,  the  conditions  present  or 
approaching  for  the  restoration  of  a  Jewish  State  planted  on 


422 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


the  old  ground  as  a  centre  of  national  feeling,  a  source  of 
dignifying  protection,  a  special  channel  for  special  energies, 
which  may  contribute  some  added  form  of  national  genius, 
and  an  added  voice  in  the  councils  of  the  world  ? 

They  are  among  us  everywhere ;  it  is  useless  to  say  we  are 
not  fond  of  them.  'Perhaps  we  are  not  fond  of  proletaries 
and  their  tendency  to  form  Unions,  but  the  world  is  not 
therefore  to  be  rid  of  them.  If  we  wish  to  free  ourselves  from 
the  inconveniences  that  we  have  to  complain  of,  whether  in 
proletaries  or  in  Jews,  our  best  course  is  to  encourage  all 
means  of  improving  these  neighbors  who  elbow  us  in  a  thick¬ 
ening  crowd,  and  of  sending  their  incommodious  energies  into 
beneficent  channels.  Why  are  we  so  eager  for  the  dignity  of 
certain  populations  of  whom,  perhaps,  we  have  never  seen  a 
single  specimen,  and  of  whose  history,  legend,  or  literature 
we  have  been  contentedly  ignorant  for  ages,  while  we  sneer 
at  the  notion  of  a  renovated  national  dignity  for  the  Jews, 
whose  ways  of  thinking  and  whose  very  verbal  forms  are  on 
our  lips  in  every  prayer  which  we  end  with  an  Amen  ?  Some 
of  us  consider  this  question  dismissed  when  they  have  said 
the  wealthiest  J ews  have  no  desire  to  forsake  their  European 
palaces  and  go  to  live  in  Jerusalem.  But  in  a  return  from 
exile,  in  the  restoration  of  a  people,  the  question  is  not 
whether  certain  rich  men  will  choose  to  remain  behind,  but 
whether  there  will  be  found  worthy  men  who  will  choose  to 
lead  the  return.  Plenty  of  prosperous  Jews  remained  in 
Babylon  when  Ezra  marshalled  his  band  of  forty  thousand 
and  began  a  new  glorious  epoch  in  the  history  of  his  race, 
making  the  preparation  for  that  epoch  in  the  history  of  the 
world  which  has  been  held  glorious  enough  to  be  dated  from 
forevermore.  The  hinge  of  possibility  is  simply  the  existence 
of  an  adequate  community  of  feeling,  as  well  as  widespread 
need,  in  the  Jewish  race,  and  the  hope  that  among  its  finer 
specimens  there  may  arise  some  men  of  instruction  and  ar¬ 
dent  public  spirit,  some  new  Ezras,  modern  Maccabees,  who 
will  know  how  to  use  all  favoring  outward  conditions,  how 
to  triumph  by  heroic  example  over  the  indifference  of  their 


THE  MODERN  HEP!  HEP!  HEP! 


423 


fellows  and  the  scorn  of  their  foes,  and  will  steadfastly  set 
their  faces  toward  making  their  people  once  more  one  among 
the  nations. 

Formerly,  Evangelical  Orthodoxy  was  prone  to  dwell  on 
the  fulfilment  of  prophecy  in  the  “  restoration  of  the  Jews.” 
Such  interpretation  of  the  prophets  is  less  in  vogue  now. 
The  dominant  mode  is  to  insist  on  a  Christianity  that  dis¬ 
owns  its  origin,  that  is  not  a  substantial  growth,  having  a 
genealogy,  but  is  a  vaporous  reflex  of  modern  notions.  The 
Christ  of  Matthew  had  the  heart  of  a  Jew:  “Go  ye  first  to 
the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel.”  The  Apostle  of  the 
Gentiles  had  the  heart  of  a  Jew :  “For  I  could  wish  that  my¬ 
self  were  accursed  from  Christ  for  my  brethren,  my  kinsmen 
according  to  the  flesh  :  who  are  Israelites  ;  to  whom  per- 
taineth  the  adoption,  and  the  glory,  and  the  covenants,  and 
the  giving  of  the  law,  and  the  service  of  God,  and  the  prom 
ises ;  whose  are  the  fathers,  and  of  whom,  as  concerning  the 
flesh,  Christ  came.”  Modern  apostles,  extolling  Christianity, 
are  found  using  a  different  tone ;  they  prefer  the  mediaeval 
cry  translated  into  modern  phrase.  But  the  mediaeval  cry, 
too,  was  in  substance  very  ancient  —  more  ancient  than  the 
days  of  Augustus.  Pagans  in  successive  ages  said,  “  These 
people  are  unlike  us,  and  refuse  to  be  made  like  us ;  let  us 
punish  them.”  The  Jews  were  steadfast  in  their  separateness, 
and  through  that  separateness  Christianity  was  born.  A  mod¬ 
ern  book  on  Liberty  has  maintained  that  from  the  freedom  of 
individual  men  to  persist  in  idiosyncrasies  the  world  may  be 
enriched.  Why  should  we  not  apply  this  argument  to  the 
idiosyncrasy  of  a  nation,  and  pause  in  our  haste  to  hoot  it 
down  ?  There  is  still  a  great  function  for  the  steadfastness 
of  the  Jew  :  not  that  he  should  shut  out  the  utmost  illumina- 
'tion  which  knowledge  can  throw  on  his  national  history,  but 
that  he  should  cherish  the  store  of  inheritance  which  that  his¬ 
tory  has  left  him.  Every  Jew  should  be  conscious  that  he  is 
one  of  a  multitude  possessing  common  objects  of  piety,  in  the 
immortal  achievements  and  immortal  sorrows  of  ancestors 
who  have  transmitted  to  them  a  physical  and  mental  type 


424 


ESSAYS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT. 


strong  enough,  eminent  enough  in  faculties,  pregnant  enough 
with  peculiar  promise,  to  constitute  a  new  beneficent  individ¬ 
uality  among  the  nations,  and,  by  confuting  the  traditions  of 
scorn,  nobly  avenge  the  wrongs  done  to  their  fathers. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  the  worthy  child  of  a  nation  that 
has  brought  forth  illustrious  prophets,  high  and  unique 
among  the  poets  of  the  world,  is  bound  by  their  visions. 

Is  bound  ? 

Yes,  for  the  effective  bond  of  human  action  is  feeling;  and 
the  worthy  child  of  a  people  owning  the  triple  name  of  He¬ 
brew,  Israelite,  and  Jew,  feels  his  kinship  with  the  glories 
and  the  sorrows,  the  degradation  and  the  possible  renovation, 
of  his  national  family. 

Will  any  one  teach  the  nullification  of  this  feeling,  and 
call  his  doctrine  a  philosophy  ?  He  will  teach  a  blinding 
superstition,  the  superstition  that  a  theory  of  human  well¬ 
being  can  be  constructed  in  disregard  of  the  influences  which 
have  made  us  human. 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL 


Give  me  no  light,  great  Heaven,  but  such  as  turas 
To  energy  of  human  fellowship  , 

No  powers  beyond  the  growing  heritage 
That  makes  completer  manhood. 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


- * 

CHAPTER  I. 

T«<e  time  of  my  end  approaches.  I  have  lately  been  subject 
to  avtacks  of  angina  pectoris ;  and  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
things,  my  physician  tells  me,  I  may  fairly  hope  that  my 
life  will  not  be  protracted  many  months.  Unless,  then,  I 
am  cursed  with  an  exceptional  physical  constitution,  as  I  am 
cursed  with  an  exceptional  mental  character,  I  shall  not  much 
longer  groan  under  the  wearisome  burthen  of  this  earthly 
existence.  If  it  were  to  be  otherwise  —  if  I  were  to  live  on 
to  the  age  most  men  desire  and  provide  for  —  I  should  for 
once  have  known  whether  the  miseries  of  delusive  expectation 
can  outweigh  the  miseries  of  true  prevision.  For  I  foresee 
when  I  shall  die,  and  everything  that  will  happen  in  my  last 
moments. 

Just  a  month  from  this  day,  on  the  20th  of  September,  1850, 
I  shall  be  sitting  in  this  chair,  in  this  study,  at  ten  o’clock  at 
night,  longing  to  die,  weary  of  incessant  insight  and  foresight, 
without  delusions  and  without  hope.  Just  as  I  am  watching 
a  tongue  of  blue  flame  rising  in  the  fire,  and  my  lamp  is  burn¬ 
ing  low,  the  horrible  contraction  will  begin  at  my  chest.  I 
shall  only  have  time  to  reach  the  bell,  and  pull  it  violently, 
before  the  sense  of  suffocation  will  come.  No  one  will  answer 
my  bell.  I  know  why.  My  two  servants  are  lovers,  and  will 
have  quarrelled.  My  housekeeper  will  have  rushed  out  of  the 
house  in  a  fury,  two  hours  before,  hoping  that  Perry  will  be¬ 
lieve  she  has  gone  to  drown  herself.  Perry  is  alarmed  at  last, 
and  is  gone  out  after  her.  The  little  scullery-maid  is  asleep 
on  a  bench :  she  never  answers  the  bell  j  it  does  not  wake  hex. 


428 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


The  sense  of  suffocation  increases :  my  lamp  goes  out  with  a 
horrible  stench :  I  make  a  great  effort,  and  snatch  at  the  bell 
again.  I  long  for  life,  and  there  is  no  help.  I  thirsted  for 
the  unknown :  the  thirst  is  gone.  0  God,  let  me  stay  with 
the  known,  and  be  weary  of  it :  I  am  content.  Agony  of  pain 
and  suffocation  —  and  all  the  while  the  earth,  the  fields,  the 
pebbly  brook  at  the  bottom  of  the  rookery,  the  fresh  scent 
after  the  rain,  the  light  of  the  morning  through  my  chamber- 
window,  the  warmth  of  the  hearth  after  the  frosty  air  —  will 
darkness  close  over  them  forever  ? 

Darkness  —  darkness — no  pain  —  nothing  but  darkness :  but 
I  am  passing  on  and  on  through  the  darkness :  my  thought 
stays  in  the  darkness,  but  always  with  a  sense  of  moving 
onward.  .  .  . 

Before  that  time  comes,  I  wish  to  use  my  last  hours  of  ease 
and  strength  in  telling  the  strange  story  of  my  experience. 
I  have  never  fully  unbosomed  myself  to  any  human  being;  I 
have  never  been  encouraged  to  trust  much  in  the  sympathy  of 
my  fellow-men.  But  we  have  all  a  chance  of  meeting  with 
some  pity,  some  tenderness,  some  charity,  when  we  are  dead : 
it  is  the  living  only  who  cannot  be  forgiven  —  the  living  only 
from  whom  men’s  indulgence  and  reverence  are  held  off,  like 
the  rain  by  the  hard  east  wind.  While  the  heart  beats,  bruise 
it  —  it  is  your  only  opportunity ;  while  the  eye  can  still  turn 
towards  you  with  moist  timid  entreaty,  freeze  it  with  an  icy 
unanswering  gaze ;  while  the  ear,  that  delicate  messenger  to 
tire  inmost  sanctuary  of  the  soul,  can  still  take  in  the  tones  of 
kindness,  put  it  off  with  hard  civility,  or  sneering  compliment, 
or  envious  affectation  of  indifference ;  while  the  creative  brain 
can  still  throb  with  the  sense  of  injustice,  with  the  yearning 
for  brotherly  recognition  —  make  haste  —  oppress  it  with  your 
ill-considered  judgments,  your  trivial  comparisons,  your  care¬ 
less  misrepresentations.  The  heart  will  by-and-by  be  still  — 
ubi  sceva  indignatio  ulterius  cor  lacerate  nequit ;  1  the  eye  will 
cease  to  entreat ;  the  ear  will  be  deaf ;  the  brain  will  have 
ceased  from  all  wants  as  well  as  from  all  work.  Then  your 
charitable  speeches  may  find  vent ;  then  you  may  remember 

1  Inscription  on  Swift’s  tombstone. 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


42$ 


and  pity  the  toil  and  the  struggle  and  the  failure ;  then  you 
may  give  due  honor  to  the  work  achieved ;  then  you  may  find 
extenuation  for  errors,  and  may  consent  to  bury  them. 

That  is  a  trivial  schoolboy  text ;  why  do  I  dwell  on  it  ?  It 
has  little  reference  to  me,  for  I  shall  leave  no  works  behind 
me  for  men  to  honor.  I  have  no  near  relatives  who  will  make 
up,  by  weeping  over  my  grave,  for  the  wounds  they  inflicted 
on  me  when  I  was  among  them.  It  is  only  the  story  of 
my  life  that  will  perhaps  win  a  little  more  sympathy  from 
strangers  when  I  am  dead,  than  I  ever  believed  it  would  ob¬ 
tain  from  my  friends  while  I  was  living. 

My  childhood  perhaps  seems  happier  to  me  than  it  really 
was,  by  contrast  with  all  the  after-years.  For  then  the  curtain 
of  the  future  was  as  impenetrable  to  me  as  to  other  children: 
I  had  all  their  delight  in  the  present  hour,  their  sweet  indefi¬ 
nite  hopes  for  the  morrow ;  and  I  had  a  tender  mother :  even 
now,  after  the  dreary  lapse  of  long  years,  a  slight  trace  of 
sensation  accompanies  the  remembrance  of  her  caress  as  she 
held  me  on  her  knee  —  her  arms  round  my  little  body,  her 
cheek  pressed  on  mine.  I  had  a  complaint  of  the  eyes  that 
made  me  blind  for  a  little  while,  and  she  kept  me  on  her  knee 
from  morning  till  night.  That  unequalled  love  soon  vanished 
out  of  my  life,  and  even  to  my  childish  consciousness  it  was 
as  if  that  life  had  become  more  chill.  I  rode  my  little  white 
pony  with  the  groom  by  my  side  as  before,  but  there  were  no 
loving  eyes  looking  at  me  as  I  mounted,  no  glad  arms  opened 
to  me  when  I  came  back.  Perhaps  I  missed  my  mother’s  love 
more  than  most  children  of  seven  or  eight  would  have  done, 
to  whom  the  other  pleasures  of  life  remained  as  before ;  for  I 
was  certainly  a  very  sensitive  child.  I  remember  still  the 
mingled  trepidation  and  delicious  excitement  with  which  I 
was  affected  by  the  tramping  of  the  horses  on  the  pavement 
in  the  echoing  stables,  by  the  loud  resonance  of  the  grooms’ 
voices,  by  the  booming  bark  of  the  dogs  as  my  father’s  car¬ 
riage  thundered  under  the  archway  of  the  courtyard,  by  the 
din  of  the  gong  as  it  gave  notice  of  luncheon  and  dinner. 
The  measured  tramp  of  soldiery  which  I  sometimes  heard  — ■ 
lor  my  father’s  house  lay  near  a  county  town  where  there 


480 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


were  large  barracks  —  made  me  sob  and  tremble ;  and  yet 
when  they  were  gone  past,  I  longed  for  them  to  come  back 
again. 

I  fancy  my  father  thought  me  an  odd  child,  and  had  little 
fondness  for  me  ;  though  he  was  very  careful  in  fulfilling  what 
he  regarded  as  a  parent’s  duties.  But  he  was  already  past  the 
middle  of  life,  and  I  was  not  his  only  son.  My  mother  had 
been  his  second  wife,  and  he  was  five-and-forty  when  he  mar¬ 
ried  her.  He  was  a  firm,  unbending,  intensely  orderly  man, 
in  root  and  stem  a  banker,  but  with  a  flourishing  graft  of  the 
active  landholder,  aspiring  to  county  influence :  one  of  those 
people  who  are  always  like  themselves  from  dajr  to  day,  who 
are  uninfluenced  by  the  weather,  and  neither  know  melancholy 
nor  high  spirits.  I  held  him  in  great  awe,  and  appeared  more 
timid  and  sensitive  in  his  presence  than  at  other  times  ;  a  cir¬ 
cumstance  which,  perhaps,  helped  to  confirm  him  in  the  inten¬ 
tion  to  educate  me  on  a  different  plan  from  the  prescriptive 
one  with  which  he  had  complied  in  the  case  of  my  elder 
brother,  already  a  tall  youth  at  Eton.  My  brother  was  to  be 
his  representative  and  successor ;  he  must  go  to  Eton  and 
Oxford,  for  the  sake  of  making  connections,  of  course :  my 
father  was  not  a  man  to  underrate  the  bearing  of  Latin  satir¬ 
ists  or  Greek  dramatists  on  the  attainment  of  an  aristocratic 
position.  But,  intrinsically,  he  had  slight  esteem  for  “  those 
dead  but  sceptred  spirits  ;  ”  having  qualified  himself  for  form¬ 
ing  an  independent  opinion  by  reading  Potter’s  “  iEschylus,” 
and  dipping  into  Francis’s  “  Horace.”  To  this  negative  view 
he  added  a  positive  one,  derived  from  a  recent  connection  with 
mining  speculations ;  namely,  that  a  scientific  education  was 
the  really  useful  training  for  a  younger  son.  Moreover,  it  was 
clear  that  a  shy,  sensitive  boy  like  me  was  not  fit  to  encounter 
the  rough  experience  of  a  public  school.  Mr.  Letherall  had 
said  so  very  decidedly.  Mr.  Letherall  was  a  large  man  in 
spectacles,  who  one  day  took  my  small  head  between  his  large 
hands,  and  pressed  it  here  and  there  in  an  exploratory,  suspi¬ 
cious  manner  —  then  placed  each  of  his  great  thumbs  on  my 
temples,  and  pushed  me  a  little  way  from  him,  and  stared  at 
me  with  glittering  spectacles.  The  contemplation  appeared  to 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL.  431 

displease  him,  for  he  frowned  sternly,  and  said  to  my  father, 
drawing  his  thumbs  across  my  eyebrows  — 

“The  deficiency  is  there,  sir  —  there  ;  and  here,”  he  added, 
touching  the  upper  sides  of  my  head,  “  here  is  the  excess. 
That  must  be  brought  out,  sir,  and  this  must  be  laid  to  sleep.” 

I  was  in  a  state  of  tremor,  partly  at  the  vague  idea  that  I 
was  the  object  of  reprobation,  partly  in  the  agitation  of  my 
first  hatred  —  hatred  of  this  big,  spectacled  man,  who  pulled 
my  head  about  as  if  he  wanted  to  buy  and  cheapen  it. 

I  am  not  aware  how  much  Mr.  Letherall  had  to  do  with  the 
system  afterwards  adopted  towards  me,  but  it  was  presently 
clear  that  private  tutors,  natural  history,  science,  and  the  mod¬ 
ern  languages,  were  the  appliances  by  which  the  defects  of  my 
organization  were  to  be  remedied.  I  was  very  stupid  about 
machines,  so  I  was  to  be  greatly  occupied  with  them  ;  I  had 
no  memory  for  classification,  so  it  was  particularly  necessary 
that  I  should  study  systematic  zoology  and  botany  ;  I  was 
hungry  for  human  deeds  and  human  emotions,  so  I  was  to  be 
plentifully  crammed  with  the  mechanical  powers,  the  elemen¬ 
tary  bodies,  and  the  phenomena  of  electricity  and  magnetism. 
A  better-constituted  boy  would  certainly  have  profited  under 
my  intelligent  tutors,  with  their  scientific  apparatus ;  and 
would,  doubtless,  have  found  the  phenomena  of  electricity  and 
magnetism  as  fascinating  as  I  was,  every  Thursday,  assured 
they  were.  As  it  was,  I  could  have  paired  off,  for  ignorance 
of  whatever  was  taught  me,  with  the  worst  Latin  scholar  that 
was  ever  turned  out  of  a  classical  academy.  I  read  Plutarch, 
and  Shakespeare,  and  Don  Quixote  by  the  sly,  and  supplied  my¬ 
self  in  that  way  with  wandering  thoughts,  while  my  tutor  was 
assuring  me  that  “  an  improved  man,  as  distinguished  from  an 
ignorant  one,  was  a  man  who  knew  the  reason  why  water  ran 
down-hill.”  I  had  no  desire  to  be  this  improved  man  ;  I  was 
glad  of  the  running  water ;  I  could  watch  it  and  listen  to  it 
gurgling  among  the  pebbles,  and  bathing  the  bright  green 
water-plants,  by  the  hour  together.  I  did  not  want  to  know 
why  it  ran;  I  had  perfect  confidence  that  there  were  good 
reasons  for  what  was  so  very  beautiful. 

There  is  no  need  to  dwell  on  this  part  of  my  life.  I  have 


432 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


said  enough  to  indicate  that  my  nature  was  of  the  sensitive, 
unpractical  order,  and  that  it  grew  up  in  an  uncongenial  me¬ 
dium,  which  could  never  foster  it  into  happy,  healthy  develop¬ 
ment.  When  I  was  sixteen  I  was  sent  to  Geneva  to  complete 
my  course  of  education  ;  and  the  change  was  a  very  happy  one 
to  me,  for  the  first  sight  of  the  Alps,  with  the  setting  sun  on 
them,  as  we  descended  the  Jura,  seemed  to  me  like  an  entrance 
into  heaven  ;  and  the  three  years  of  my  life  there  were  spent 
in  a  perpetual  sense  of  exaltation,  as  if  from  a  draught  of  de¬ 
licious  wine,  at  the  presence  of  Nature  in  all  her  awful  love¬ 
liness.  You  will  think,  perhaps,  that  I  must  have  been  a  poet, 
from  this  early  sensibility  to  Nature.  But  my  lot  was  not  so 
happy  as  that.  A  poet  pours  forth  his  song  and  believes  in  the 
listening  ear  and  answering  soul,  to  which  his  song  will  be 
floated  sooner  or  later.  But  the  poet’s  sensibility  without  his 
voice  —  the  poet’s  sensibility  that  finds  no  vent  but  in  silent 
tears  on  the  sunny  bank,  when  the  noonday  light  sparkles  on 
the  water,  or  in  an  inward  shudder  at  the  sound  of  harsh  hu¬ 
man  tones,  the  sight  of  a  cold  human  eye  —  this  dumb  passion 
brings  with  it  a  fatal  solitude  of  soul  in  the  society  of  one’s 
fellow-men.  My  least  solitary  moments  were  those  in  which 
I  pushed  off  in  my  boat,  at  evening,  towards  the  centre  of  the 
lake ;  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  sky,  and  the  glowing  mountain- 
tops,  and  the  wide  blue  water,  surrounded  me  with  a  cherish¬ 
ing  love  such  as  no  human  face  had  shed  on  me  since  my 
mother’s  love  had  vanished  out  of  my  life.  I  used  to  do  as 
Jean  Jacques  did  —  lie  down  in  my  boat  and  let  it  glide  where 
it  would,  while  I  looked  up  at  the  departing  glow  leaving  one 
mountain-top  after  the  other,  as  if  the  prophet’s  chariot  of  fire 
were  passing  over  them  on  its  way  to  the  home  of  light. 
Then,  when  the  white  summits  were  all  sad  and  corpse-like, 
I  had  to  push  homeward,  for  I  was  under  careful  surveillance, 
and  was  allowed  no  late  wanderings.  This  disposition  of  mine 
was  not  favorable  to  the  formation  of  intimate  friendships 
among  the  numerous  youths  of  my  own  age  who  are  always  to 
be  found  studying  at  Geneva.  Yet  I  made  one  such  friend¬ 
ship  ;  and,  singularly  enough,  it  was  with  a  youth  whose  intel¬ 
lectual  tendencies  were  the  very  reverse  of  my  own.  I  shall 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


433 


call  him  Charles  Meunier  ;  his  real  surname  —  an  English  one, 
for  he  was  of  English  extraction  —  having  since  become  cele¬ 
brated.  He  was  an  orphan,  who  lived  on  a  miserable  pittance 
while  he  pursued  the  medical  studies  for  which  he  had  a  spe¬ 
cial  genius.  Strange  !  that  with  my  vague  mind,  susceptible 
and  unobservant,  hating  inquiry  and  given  up  to  contempla¬ 
tion,  I  should  have  been  drawn  towards  a  youth  whose  strong¬ 
est  passion  was  science.  But  the  bond  was  not  an  intellectual 
one  ;  it  came  from  a  source  that  can  happily  blend  the  stupid 
with  the  brilliant,  the  dreamy  with  the  practical :  it  came  from 
community  of  feeling.  Charles  was  poor  and  ugly,  derided  by 
Genevese  gamins ,  and  not  acceptable  in  drawing-rooms.  I  saw 
that  he  was  isolated,  as  I  was,  though  from  a  different  cause, 
and,  stimulated  by  a  sympathetic  resentment,  I  made  timid 
advances  towards  him.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  there  sprang 
up  as  much  comradeship  between  us  as  our  different  habits 
would  allow ;  and  in  Charles’s  rare  holidays  we  went  up  the 
Saleve  together,  or  took  the  boat  to  Vevay,  while  I  listened 
dreamily  to  the  monologues  in  which  he  unfolded  his  bold 
conceptions  of  future  experiment  and  discovery.  I  mingled 
them  confusedly  in  my  thought  with  glimpses  of  blue  water 
and  delicate  floating  cloud,  with  the  notes  of  birds  and  the 
distant  glitter  of  the  glacier.  He  knew  quite  well  that  my 
mind  was  half  absent,  yet  he  liked  to  talk  to  me  in  this  way; 
for  don’t  we  talk  of  our  hopes  and  our  projects  even  to  dogs 
and  birds,  when  they  love  us  ?  I  have  mentioned  this  one 
friendship  because  of  its  connection  with  a  strange  and  terrible 
scene  which  I  shall  have  to  narrate  in  my  subsequent  life. 

This  happier  life  at  Geneva  was  put  an  end  to  by  a  severe 
illness,  which  is  partly  a  blank  to  me,  partly  a  time  of  dimly 
remembered  suffering,  with  the  presence  of  my  father  by  my 
bed  from  time  to  time.  Then  came  the  languid  monotony  of 
convalescence,  the  days  gradually  breaking  into  variety  and 
distinctness  as  my  strength  enabled  me  to  take  longer  and 
longer  drives.  On  one  of  these  more  vividly  remembered  days, 
my  father  said  to  me,  as  he  sat  beside  my  sofa  — 

“When  you  are  quite  well  enough  to  travel.  Latimer,  I 
shall  take  you  home  with  me.  The  journey  will  amuse  you 


▼or,,  ix- 


434 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


and  do  you  good,  for  I  shall  go  through  the  Tyrol  and  Austria, 
and  you  will  see  many  new  places.  Our  neighbors,  the  Fil- 
mores,  are  come ;  Alfred  will  join  us  at  Basle,  and  we  shall  all 
go  together  to  Vienna,  and  back  by  Prague  —  ” 

My  father  was  called  away  before  he  had  finished  his  sen¬ 
tence,  and  he  left  my  mind  resting  on  the  word  Prague ,  with 
a  strange  sense  that  a  new  and  wondrous  scene  was  breaking 
upon  me  :  a  city  under  the  broad  sunshine,  that  seemed  to  me 
as  if  it  were  the  summer  sunshine  of  a  long-past  century 
arrested  in  its  course  —  unrefreshed  for  ages  by  the  dews  of 
night,  or  the  rushing  rain-cloud  ;  scorching  the  dusty,  weary, 
time-eaten  grandeur  of  a  people  doomed  to  live  on  in  the  stale 
repetition  of  memories,  like  deposed  and  superannuated  kings 
in  their  regal  gold-inwoven  tatters.  The  city  looked  so  thirsty 
that  the  broad  river  seemed  to  me  a  sheet  of  metal ;  and  the 
blackened  statues,  as  I  passed  under  their  blank  gaze,  along 
the  unending  bridge,  with  their  ancient  garments  and  their 
saintly  crowns,  seemed  to  me  the  real  inhabitants  and  owners 
of  this  place,  while  the  busy,  trivial  men  and  women,  hurrying 
to  and  fro,  were  a  swarm  of  ephemeral  visitants  infesting  it 
for  a  day.  It  is  such  grim,  stony  beings  as  these,  I  thought, 
who  are  the  fathers  of  ancient  faded  children,  in  those  tanned 
time-fretted  dwellings  that  crowd  the  steep  before  me  ;  who 
pay  their  court  in  the  worn  and  crumbling  pomp  of  the  palace 
which  stretches  its  monotonous  length  on  the  height;  who 
worship  wearily  in  the  stifling  air  of  the  churches,  urged  by 
no  fear  or  hope,  but  compelled  by  their  doom  to  be  ever  old 
and  undying,  to  live  on  in  the  rigidity  of  habit,  as  they  live  on 
in  perpetual  midday,  without  the  repose  of  night  or  the  new 
birth  of  morning. 

A  stunning  clang  of  metal  suddenly  thrilled  through  me, 
and  I  became  conscious  of  the  objects  in  my  room  again :  one 
of  the  fire-irons  had  fallen  as  Pierre  opened  the  door  to  bring 
me  my  draught.  My  heart  was  palpitating  violently,  and  I 
begged  Pierre  to  leave  my  draught  beside  me ;  I  would  take 
it  presently. 

As  soon  as  I  was  alone  again,  I  began  to  ask  myself  whether 
I  had  been  sleeping.  Was  this  a  dream  —  this  wonderfully 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


435 


distinct  vision  —  minute  in  its  distinctness  down  to  a  patch  of 
rainbow  light  on  the  pavement,  transmitted  through  a  colored 
lamp  in  the  shape  of  a  star  —  of  a  strange  city,  quite  unfamil¬ 
iar  to  my  imagination  ?  I  had  seen  no  picture  of  Prague :  it 
lay  in  my  mind  as  a  mere  name,  with  vaguely  remembered  his¬ 
torical  associations  —  ill-defined  memories  of  imperial  gran¬ 
deur  and  religious  wars. 

Nothing  of  this  sort  had  ever  occurred  in  my  dreaming  ex¬ 
perience  before,  for  I  had  often  been  humiliated  because  my 
dreams  were  only  saved  from  being  utterly  disjointed  and 
commonplace  by  the  frequent  terrors  of  nightmare.  But  I 
could  not  believe  that  I  had  been  asleep,  for  I  remembered 
distinctly  the  gradual  breaking-in  of  the  vision  upon  me,  like 
the  new  images  in  a  dissolving  view,  or  the  growing  distinct¬ 
ness  of  the  landscape  as  the  sun  lifts  up  the  veil  of  the  morn¬ 
ing  mist.  And  while  I  was  conscious  of  this  incipient  vision, 
I  was  also  conscious  that  Pierre  came  to  tell  my  father  Mr. 
Filmore  was  waiting  for  him,  and  that  my  father  hurried  out 
of  the  room.  No,  it  was  not  a  dream;  was  it  —  the  thought 
was  full  of  tremulous  exultation  —  was  it  the  poet’s  nature  in 
me,  hitherto  only  a  troubled  yearning  sensibility,  now  mani¬ 
festing  itself  suddenly  as  spontaneous  creation  ?  Surely  it 
was  in  this  way  that  Homer  saw  the  plain  of  Troy,  that  Dante 
saw  the  abodes  of  the  departed,  that  Milton  saw  the  earthward 
flight  of  the  Tempter.  Was  it  that  my  illness  had  wrought 
some  happy  change  in  my  organization  —  given  a  firmer  ten¬ 
sion  to  my  nerves  —  carried  off  some  dull  obstruction  ?  I  had 
often  read  of  such  effects  —  in  works  of  fiction  at  least.  Nay; 
in  genuine  biographies  I  had  read  of  the  subtilizing  or  exalt¬ 
ing  influence  of  some  diseases  on  the  mental  powers.  Did  not 
Novalis  feel  his  inspiration  intensified  under  the  progress  of 
consumption  ? 

When  my  mind  had  dwelt  for  some  time  on  this  blissful 
idea,  it  seemed  to  me  that  T  might  perhaps  test  it  by  an  exer¬ 
tion  of  my  will.  The  vision  had  begun  when  my  father  was 
speaking  of  our  going  to  Prague.  I  did  not  for  a  moment 
believe  it  was  really  a  representation  of  that  city  ;  T  believed 
—  I  hoped  it  was  a  picture  that  my  newly  liberated  genius  had 


436 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


painted  in  fiery  haste,  with  the  colors  snatched  from  lazy 
memory.  Suppose  I  were  to  fix  my  mind  on  some  other  place 
—  Venice,  for  example,  which  was  far  more  familiar  to  my 
imagination  than  Prague :  perhaps  the  same  sort  of  result 
would  follow.  I  concentrated  my  thoughts  on  Venice ;  I 
stimulated  my  imagination  with  poetic  memories,  and  strove 
to  feel  myself  present  in  Venice,  as  I  had  felt  myself  present 
in  Prague.  But  in  vain.  I  was  only  coloring  the  Canaletto 
engravings  that  hung  in  my  old  bedroom  at  home  ;  the  picture 
was  a  shifting  one,  my  mind  wandering  uncertainly  in  search 
of  more  vivid  images ;  I  could  see  no  accident  of  form  or 
shadow  without  conscious  labor  after  the  necessary  conditions. 
It  was  all  prosaic  effort,  not  rapt  passivity,  such  as  I  had 
experienced  half  an  hour  before.  I  was  discouraged:  but  I 
remembered  that  inspiration  was  fitful. 

For  several  days  I  was  in  a  state  of  excited  expectation, 
watching  for  a  recurrence  of  my  new  gift.  I  sent  my  thoughts 
ranging  over  my  world  of  knowledge,  in  the  hope  that  they 
would  find  some  object  which  would  send  a  reawakening  vibra¬ 
tion  through  my  slumbering  genius.  But  no;  my  world 
remained  as  dim  as  ever,  and  that  flash  of  strange  light  refused 
to  come  again,  though  I  watched  for  it  with  palpitating 
eagerness. 

My  father  accompanied  me  every  day  in  a  drive,  and  a 
gradually  lengthening  walk  as  my  powers  of  walking  in¬ 
creased;  and  one  evening  he  had  agreed  to  come  and  fetch 
me  at  twelve  the  next  day,  that  we  might  go  together  to  select 
a  musical  box,  and  other  purchases  rigorously  demanded  of  a 
rich  Englishman  visiting  Geneva.  He  was  one  of  the  most 
punctual  of  men  and  bankers,  and  I  was  always  nervously 
anxious  to  be  quite  ready  for  him  at  the  appointed  time. 
But,  to  my  surprise,  at  a  quarter  past  twelve  he  had  not 
appeared.  I  felt  all  the  impatience  of  a  convalescent  who 
has  nothing  particular  to  do,  and  who  has  just  taken  a  tonic 
in  the  prospect  of  immediate  exercise  that  would  carry  off 
the  stimulus. 

Unable  to  sit  still  and  reserve  my  strength,  I  walked  up  and 
down  the  room,  looking  out  on  the  current  of  the  Rhone,  just 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL.  437 

where  it  leaves  the  dark-blue  lake  ;  but  thinking  all  the  while 
of  the  possible  causes  that  could  detain  my  father. 

Suddenly  I  was  conscious  that  my  father  was  in  the  room, 
but  not  alone :  there  were  two  persons  with  him.  Strange  I 
I  had  heard  no  footstep,  I  had  not  seen  the  door  open ;  but  I 
saw  my  father,  and  at  his  right  hand  our  neighbor  Mrs.  Fil- 
more,  whom  I  remembered  very  well,  though  I  had  not  seen 
her  for  five  years.  She  was  a  commonplace  middle-aged 
woman,  in  silk  and  cashmere  ;  but  the  lady  on  the  left  of  my 
father  was  not  more  than  twenty,  a  tall,  slim,  willowy  figure, 
with  luxuriant  blond  hair,  arranged  in  cunning  braids  and 
folds  that  looked  almost  too  massive  for  the  slight  figure  and 
the  small-featured,  thin-lipped  face  they  crowned.  But  the 
face  had  not  a  girlish  expression  :  the  features  were  sharp,  the 
pale  gray  eyes  at  once  acute,  restless,  and  sarcastic.  They 
were  fixed  on  me  in  half-smiling  curiosity,  and  I  felt  a  painful 
sensation  as  if  a  sharp  wind  were  cutting  me.  The  pale-green 
dress,  and  the  green  leaves  that  seemed  to  form  a  border  about 
her  pale  blond  hair,  made  me  think  of  a  Water-Nixie,  —  for  my 
mind  was  full  of  German  lyrics,  and  this  pale,  fatal-eyed 
woman,  with  the  green  weeds,  looked  like  a  birth  from  some 
cold  sedgy  stream,  the  daughter  of  an  aged  river. 

“  Well,  Latimer,  you  thought  me  long,”  my  father  said.  .  .  . 

But  while  the  last  word  was  in  my  ears,  the  whole  group 
vanished,  and  there  was  nothing  between  me  and  the  Chinese 
painted  folding-screen  that  stood  before  the  door.  I  was  cold 
and  trembling ;  I  could  only  totter  forward  and  throw  myself 
on  the  sofa.  This  strange  new  power  had  manifested  itself 
again.  .  .  .  But  was  it  a  power  ?  Might  it  not  rather  be  a 
disease  —  a  sort  of  intermittent  delirium,  concentrating  my 
energy  of  brain  into  moments  of  unhealthy  activity,  and  leav¬ 
ing  my  saner  hours  all  the  more  barren  ?  I  felt  a  dizzy  sense 
of  unreality  in  what  my  eye  rested  on ;  I  grasped  the  bell  con¬ 
vulsively,  like  one  trying  to  free  himself  from  nightmare,  and 
Tang  it  twice.  Pierre  came  with  a  look  of  alarm  in  his  face. 

“  Monsieur  ne  se  trouve  pas  bien  ?  ”  he  said,  anxiously. 

“  I ’m  tired  of  waiting,  Pierre,”  I  said,  as  distinctly  and  em¬ 
phatically  as  I  could,  like  a  man  determined  to  be  sober  in 


438 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


spite  of  wine ;  “  I ’m  afraid  something  has  happened  to  m^ 
father  —  he ’s  usually  so  punctual.  Run  to  the  Hotel  des 
Bergues  and  see  if  he  is  there.” 

Pierre  left  the  room  at  once,  with  a  soothing  “  Bien,  Mon¬ 
sieur  ;  ”  and  I  felt  the  better  for  this  scene  of  simple,  waking 
prose.  Seeking  to  calm  myself  still  further,  I  went  into  my  bed¬ 
room,  adjoining  the  salon,  and  opened  a  case  of  eau-de-Cologne ; 
took  out  a  bottle  ;  went  through  the  process  of  taking  out  the 
cork  very  neatly,  and  then  rubbed  the  reviving  spirit  over  my 
hands  and  forehead,  and  under  my  nostrils,  drawing  a  new 
delight  from  the  scent  because  I  had  procured  it  by  slow 
details  of  labor,  and  by  no  strange  sudden  madness.  Already 
I  had- begun  to  taste  something  of  the  horror  that  belongs  to 
the  lot  of  a  human  being  whose  nature  is  not  adjusted  to 
simple  human  conditions. 

Still  enjoying  the  scent,  I  returned  to  the  salon,  but  it  was 
not  unoccupied,  as  it  had  been  before  I  left  it.  In  front  of 
the  Chinese  folding-screen  there  was  my  father,  with  Mrs. 
Filmore  on  his  right  hand,  and  on  his  left — the  slim  blond¬ 
haired  girl,  with  the  keen  face  and  the  keen  eyes  fixed  on  me 
in  half-smiling  curiosity. 

“Well,  Latimer,  you  thought  me  long,”  my  father  said.  .  .  . 

I  heard  no  more,  felt  no  more,  till  I  became  conscious  that 
I  was  lying  with  my  head  low  on  the  sofa,  Pierre  and  my 
father  by  my  side.  As  soon  as  I  was  thoroughly  revived,  my 
father  left  the  room,  and  presently  returned,  saying  — 

“  I ’ve  been  to  tell  the  ladies  how  you  are,  Latimer.  They 
were  waiting  in  the  next  room.  We  shall  put  off  our  shopping 
expedition  to-day.” 

Presently  he  said,  “  That  young  lady  is  Bertha  Grant,  Mrs. 
Filmore’s  orphan  niece.  Filmore  has  adopted  her,  and  she 
lives  with  them,  so  you  will  have  her  for  a  neighbor  when 
we  go  home  —  perhaps  for  a  near  relation ;  for  there  is  a 
tenderness  between  her  and  Alfred,  I  suspect,  and  I  should 
be  gratified  by  the  match,  since  Filmore  means  to  provide 
for  her  in  every  way  as  if  she  were  his  daughter.  It  had  not 
occurred  to  me  that  you  knew  nothing  about  her  living  with 
the  Filmores.” 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


430 


He  made  no  further  allusion  to  the  fact  of  my  having  fainted 
at  the  moment  of  seeing  her,  and  I  would  not  for  the  world 
have  told  him  the  reason :  I  shrank  from  the  idea  of  disclosing 
to  any  one  what  might  be  regarded  as  a  pitiable  peculiarity, 
most  of  all  from  betraying  it  to  my  father,  who  would  have 
suspected  my  sanity  ever  after. 

I  do  not  mean  to  dwell  with  particularity  on  the  details  of 
my  experience.  I  have  described  these  two  cases  at  length, 
because  they  had  definite,  clearly  traceable  results  in  my 
after-lot. 

Shortly  after  this  last  occurrence  —  I  think  the  very  next 
day  —  I  began  to  be  aware  of  a  phase  in  my  abnormal  sensi¬ 
bility,  to  which,  from  the  languid  and  slight  nature  of  my 
intercourse  with  others  since  my  illness,  I  had  not  been  alive 
before.  This  was  the  obtrusion  on  my  mind  of  the  mental 
process  going  forward  in  first  one  person,  and  then  another, 
with  whom  I  happened  to  be  in  contact :  the  vagrant,  frivolous 
ideas  and  emotions  of  some  uninteresting  acquaintance  —  Mrs. 
Filmore,  for  example  —  would  force  themselves  on  my  con¬ 
sciousness  like  an  importunate,  ill-playTed  musical  instrument, 
or  the  loud  activity  of  an  imprisoned  insect.  But  this  un¬ 
pleasant  sensibility  was  fitful,  and  left  me  moments  of  rest, 
when  the  souls  of  my  companions  were  once  more  shut  out 
from  me,  and  I  felt  a  relief  such  as  silence  brings  to  wearied 
nerves.  I  might  have  believed  this  importunate  insight  to  be 
merely  a  diseased  activity  of  the  imagination,  but  that  my 
prevision  of  incalculable  words  and  actions  proved  it  to  have  a 
fixed  relation  to  the  mental  process  in  other  minds.  But  this 
superadded  consciousness,  wearying  and  annoying  enough  when 
it  urged  on  me  the  trivial  experience  of  indifferent  people, 
became  an  intense  pain  and  grief  when  it  seemed  to  be  open¬ 
ing  to  me  the  souls  of  those  who  were  in  a  close  relation 
to  me  —  when  the  rational  talk,  the  graceful  attentions,  the 
wittily  turned  phrases,  and  the  kindly  deeds,  which  used  to 
make  the  web  of  their  characters,  were  seen  as  if  thrust 
asunder  by  a  microscopic  vision,  that  showed  all  the  interme¬ 
diate  frivolities,  all  the  suppressed  egoism,  all  the  struggling 
chaos  of  puerilities,  meanness,  vague  capricious  memories,  and 


440 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


indolent  make-shift  thoughts,  from  which  human  words  and 
deeds  emerge  like  leaflets  covering  a  fermenting  heap. 

At  Basle  we  were  joined  by  my  brother  Alfred,  now  a 
handsome  self-confident  man  of  six-and-twenty  —  a  thorough 
contrast  to  my  fragile,  nervous,  ineffectual  self.  I  believe  I 
was  held  to  have  a  sort  of  half- womanish,  half-ghostly  beauty; 
for  the  portrait-painters,  who  are  thick  as  weeds  at  Geneva, 
had  often  asked  me  to  sit  to  them,  and  I  had  been  the  model 
of  a  dying  minstrel  in  a  fancy  picture.  But  I  thoroughly  dis¬ 
liked  my  own  'physique ,  and  nothing  but  the  belief  that  it  was 
a  condition  of  poetic  genius  would  have  reconciled  me  to  it. 
That  brief  hope  was  quite  fled,  and  I  saw  in  my  face  now 
nothing  but  the  stamp  of  a  morbid  organization,  framed  for 
passive  suffering  —  too  feeble  for  the  sublime  resistance  of 
poetic  production.  Alfred,  from  whom  I  had  been  almost  con¬ 
stantly  separated,  and  who,  in  his  present  stage  of  character 
and  appearance,  came  before  me  as  a  perfect  stranger,  was 
bent  on  being  extremely  friendly  and  brother-like  to  me.  He 
had  the  superficial  kindness  of  a  good-humored,  self-satisfied 
nature,  that  fears  no  rivalry,  and  has  encountered  no  contra¬ 
rieties.  I  am  not  sure  that  my  disposition  was  good  enough 
for  me  to  have  been  quite  free  from  envy  towards  him,  even  if 
our  desires  had  not  clashed,  and  if  I  had  been  in  the  healthy 
human  condition  which  admits  of  generous  confidence  ana 
charitable  construction.  There  must  always  have  been  an 
antipathy  between  our  natures.  As  it  was,  he  became  in  a 
few  weeks  an  object  of  intense  hatred  to  me ;  and  when  ho 
entered  the  room,  still  more  when  he  spoke,  it  was  as  if  a 
sensation  of  grating  metal  had  set  my  teeth  on  edge.  My  dis¬ 
eased  consciousness  was  more  intensely  and  continually  occu¬ 
pied  with  his  thoughts  and  emotions,  than  with  those  of  any 
other  person  who  came  in  my  way.  I  was  perpetually  exas 
perated  with  the  petty  promptings  of  his  conceit  and  his  love 
of  patronage,  with  his  self-complacent  belief  in  Bertha  Grant’s 
passion  for  him,  with  his  half-pitying  contempt  for  me  —  seen 
not  in  the  ordinary  indications  of  intonation  and  phrase  and 
slight  action,  which  an  acute  and  suspicious  mind  is  on  the 
watch  for,  but  in  all  their  naked  skinless  complication. 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


441 


For  we  were  rivals,  and  our  desires  clashed,  though  he  was 
not  aware  of  it.  I  have  said  nothing  yet  of  the  effect  Bertha 
Grant  produced  in  me  on  a  nearer  acquaintance.  That  effect 
was  chiefly  determined  by  the  fact  that  she  made  the  only 
exception,  among  all  the  human  beings  about  me,  to  my  un¬ 
happy  gift  of  insight.  About  Bertha  I  was  always  in  a  state 
of  uncertainty :  I  could  watch  the  expression  of  her  face,  and 
speculate  on  its  meaning ;  I  could  ask  for  her  opinion  with  the 
real  interest  of  ignorance  ;  I  could  listen  for  her  words  and 
watch  for  her  smile  with  hope  and  fear :  she  had  for  me  the 
fascination  of  an  unravelled  destiny.  I  say  it  was  this  fact 
that  chiefly  determined  the  strong  effect  she  produced  on  me : 
for,  in  the  abstract,  no  womanly  character  could  seem  to  have 
less  affinity  for  that  of  a  shrinking,  romantic,  passionate  youth 
than  Bertha’s.  She  was  keen,  sarcastic,  unimaginative,  pre¬ 
maturely  cynical,  remaining  critical  and  unmoved  in  the  most 
impressive  scenes,  inclined  to  dissect  all  my  favorite  poems, 
and  especially  contemptuous  towards  the  German  lyrics  which 
were  my  pet  literature  at  that  time.  To  this  moment  I  am 
unable  to  define  my  feeling  towards  her :  it  was  not  ordinary 
boyish  admiration,  for  she  was  the  very  opposite,  even  to  the 
color  of  her  hair,  of  the  ideal  woman  who  still  remained  to  me 
the  type  of  loveliness  ;  and  she  was  without  that  enthusiasm 
for  the  great  and  good,  which,  even  at  the  moment  of  her 
strongest  dominion  over  me,  I  should  have  declared  to  be 
the  highest  element  of  character.  But  there  is  no  tyranny 
more  complete  than  that  which  a  self-centred  negative  nature 
exercises  over  a  morbidly  sensitive  nature  perpetually  craving 
sympathy  and  support.  The  most  independent  people  feel 
the  effect  of  a  man’s  silence  in  heightening  their  value  for  his 
opinion  —  feel  an  additional  triumph  in  conquering  the  rever¬ 
ence  of  a  critic  habitually  captious  and  satirical :  no  Avonder, 
then,  that  an  enthusiastic  self-distrusting  youth  should  w^atch 
and  wait  before  the  closed  secret  of  a  sarcastic  woman’s  face, 
as  if  it  were  the  shrine  of  the  doubtfully  benignant  deity  who 
ruled  his  destiny.  For  a  young  enthusiast  is  unable  to  imagine 
the  total  negation  in  another  mind  of  the  emotions  which  are 
stirring  his  own  :  they  may  be  feeble,  latent,  inactive,  he  thinks, 


442 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


but  they  are  there —  they  may  be  called  forth;  sometimes,  '.d 
moments  of  happy  hallucination,  he  believes  they  may  be  there 
in  all  the  greater  strength  because  he  sees  no  outward  sign  of 
them.  And  this  effect,  as  1  have  intimated,  was  heightened 
to  its  utmost  intensity  in  me,  because  Bertha  was  the  only 
being  who  remained  for  me  in  the  mysterious  seclusion  of  soul 
that  renders  such  youthful  delusion  possible.  Doubtless  there 
was  another  sort  of  Fascination  at  work  —  that  subtle  physical 
attraction  which  delights  in  cheating  our  psychological  predic¬ 
tions,  and  in  compelling  the  men  who  paint  sylphs,  to  fall 
in  love  with  some  bonne  et  brave  femme ,  heavy-heeled  and 
freckled. 

Bertha’s  behavior  towards  me  was  such  as  to  encourage  all 
my  illusions,  to  heighten  my  boyish  passion,  and  make  me 
more  and  more  dependent  on  her  smiles.  Looking  back  with 
my  present  wretched  knowledge,  I  conclude  that  her  vanity 
and  love  of  power  were  intensely  gratified  by  the  belief  that 
I  had  fainted  on  first  seeing  her  purely  from  the  strong  im¬ 
pression  her  person  had  produced  on  me.  The  most  prosaic 
woman  likes  to  believe  herself  the  object  of  a  violent,  a  poetic 
passion  ;  and  without  a  grain  of  romance  in  her,  Bertha  had 
that  spirit  of  intrigue  which  gave  piquancy  to  the  idea  that 
the  brother  of  the  man  she  meant  to  marry  was  dying  with 
love  and  jealousy  for  her  sake.  That  she  meant  to  marry  my 
brother,  was  what  at  that  time  I  did  not  believe  ;  for  though 
he  was  assiduous  in  his  attentions  to  her,  and  I  knew  well 
enough  that  both  he  and  my  father  had  made  up  their  minds 
to  this  result,  there  was  not  yet  an  understood  engagement  — 
there  had  been  no  explicit  declaration  ;  and  Bertha  habitually, 
while  she  flirted  with  my  brother,  and  accepted  his  homage 
in  a  way  that  implied  to  him  a  thorough  recognition  of  its  in¬ 
tention,  made  me  believe,  by  the  subtlest  looks  and  phrases  — 
Feminine  nothings  which  could  never  be  quoted  against  her 
•—that  he  was  really  the  object  of  her  secret  ridicule;  that 
she  thought  him,  as  I  did,  a  coxcomb,  whom  she  would  have 
pleasure  in  disappointing.  Me  she  openly  petted  in  my 
brother’s  presence,  as  if  I  were  too  young  and  sickly  ever 
to  be  thought  of  as  a  lover;  and  that  was  the  view  he  took 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


443 


of  me.  But  I  believe  she  must  inwardly  have  delighted  iu 
the  tremors  into  which  she  threw  me  by  the  coaxing  way  in 
which  she  patted  my  curls,  while  she  laughed  at  my  quota¬ 
tions.  Such  caresses  were  always  given  in  the  presence  of 
our  friends  ;  for  when  we  were  alone  together,  she  affected 
a  much  greater  distance  towards  me,  and  now  and  then  took 
the  opportunity,  by  words  or  slight  actions,  to  stimulate  my 
foolish  timid  hope  that  she  really  preferred  me.  And  why 
should  she  not  follow  her  inclination  ?  I  was  not  in  so  advan¬ 
tageous  a  position  as  my  brother,  but  I  had  fortune,  I  was  not 
a  year  younger  than  she  was,  and  she  was  an  heiress,  who 
would  soon  be  of  age  to  decide  for  herself. 

The  fluctuations  of  hope  and  fear,  confined  to  this  one  chan¬ 
nel,  made  each  day  in  her  presence  a  delicious  torment.  There 
was  one  deliberate  act  of  hers  which  especially  helped  to  in¬ 
toxicate  me.  When  we  were  at  Vienna  her  twentieth  birth¬ 
day  occurred,  and  as  she  was  very  fond  of  ornaments,  we  all 
took  the  opportunity  of  the  splendid  jewellers’  shops  in  that 
Teutonic  Paris  to  purchase  her  a  birthday  present  of  jewellery. 
Mine,  naturally,  was  the  least  expensive ;  it  was  an  opal  ring 
—  the  opal  was  my  favorite  stone,  because  it  seems  to  blush 
and  turn  pale  as  if  it  had  a  soul.  I  told  Bertha  so  when  I 
gave  it  her,  and  said  that  it  was  an  emblem  of  the  poetic  nature, 
changing  with  the  changing  light  of  heaven  and  of  woman’s 
eyes.  In  the  evening  she  appeared  elegantly  dressed,  and 
wearing  conspicuously  all  the  birthday  presents  except  mine. 
I  looked  eagerly  at  her  fingers,  but  saw  no  opal.  I  had  no 
opportunity  of  noticing  this  to  her  during  the  evening;  but 
the  next  day,  when  I  found  her  seated  near  the  window  alone, 
after  breakfast,  I  said,  “  You  scorn  to  wear  my  poor  opal.  I 
should  have  remembered  that  you  despised  poetic  natures,  and 
should  have  given  you  coral,  or  turquoise,  or  some  other 
opaque  unresponsive  stone.”  “  Do  I  despise  it  ?  ”  she  answered, 
taking  hold  of  a  delicate  gold  chain  which  she  always  wore 
round  her  neck  and  drawing  out  the  end  from  her  bosom  with 
my  ring  hanging  to  it;  “it  hurts  me  a  little,  I  can  tell  you,” 
she  said,  with  her  usual  dubious  smile,  “to  wear  it  in  that 
secret  place;  and  since  your  poetical  nature  is  so  stupid  as 


444 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


to  prefer  a  more  public  position,  I  shall  not  endure  the  pam 
any  longer.’’ 

She  took  off  the  ring  from  the  chain  and  put  it  on  her  fin¬ 
ger,  smiling  still,  while  the  blood  rushed  to  my  cheeks,  and 
I  could  not  trust  myself  to  say  a  word  of  entreaty  that  she 
would  keep  the  ring  where  it  was  before. 

I  was  completely  fooled  by  this,  and  for  two  days  shut  my 
self  up  in  my  own  room  whenever  Bertha  was  absent,  that  / 
might  intoxicate  myself  afresh  with  the  thought  of  this  scene 
and  all  it  implied. 

I  should  mention  that  during  these  two  months  —  which 
seemed  a  long  life  to  me  from  the  novelty  and  intensity  of 
the  pleasures  and  pains  I  underwent  — -  my  diseased  participa¬ 
tion  in  other  people’s  consciousness  continued  to  torment  me  ; 
now  it  was  my  father,  and  now  my  brother,  now  Mrs.  Film  ore 
or  her  husband,  and  now  our  German  courier,  whose  stream  of 
thought  rushed  upon  me  like  a  ringing  in  the  ears  not  to  be 
got  rid  of,  though  it  allowed  my  own  impulses  and  ideas  to 
continue  their  uninterrupted  course.  It  was  like  a  preter- 
naturally  heightened  sense  of  hearing,  making  audible  to  one  a 
roar  of  sound  where  others  find  perfect  stillness.  The  weari¬ 
ness  and  disgust  of  this  involuntary  intrusion  into  other  souls 
was  counteracted  only  by  my  ignorance  of  Bertha,  and  my 
growing  passion  for  her ;  a  passion  enormously  stimulated,  if 
not  produced,  by  that  ignorance.  She  was  my  oasis  of  mystery 
in  the  dreary  desert  of  knowledge.  I  had  never  allowed  my 
diseased  condition  to  betray  itself,  or  to  drive  me  into  any  un¬ 
usual  speech  or  action,  except  once,  when,  in  a  moment  of 
peculiar  bitterness  against  my  brother,  I  had  forestalled  some 
words  which  I  knew  he  was  going  to  utter  —  a  clever  obser- 
vation,  which  he  had  prepared  beforehand.  He  had  occasion 
ally  a  slightly  affected  hesitation  in  his  speech,  and  when  he 
paused  an  instant  after  the  second  word,  my  impatience  and 
jealousy  impelled  me  to  continue  the  speech  for  him,  as  if  it 
were  something  we  had  both  learned  by  rote.  He  colored  and 
looked  astonished,  as  well  as  annoyed ;  and  the  words  had  no 
sooner  escaped  my  lips  than  T  felt  a  shock  of  alarm  lest  such 
an  anticipation  of  words  —  very  fai  from  being  words  of 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


445 


course,  easy  to  divine  —  should  have  betrayed  me  as  an  excep- 
tional  being,  a  sort  of  quiet  energumen,  whom  every  one. 
Bertha  above  all,  would  shudder  at  and  avoid.  But  I  magni¬ 
fied,  as  usual,  the  impression  any  word  or  deed  of  mine  could 
produce  on  others ;  for  no  one  gave  any  sign  of  having  noticed 
my  interruption  as  more  than  a  rudeness,  to  be  forgiven  me 
on  the  score  of  my  feeble  nervous  condition. 

While  this  superadded  consciousness  of  the  actual  was 
almost  constant  with  me,  I  had  never  had  a  recurrence  of 
that  distinct  prevision  which  I  have  described  in  relation  to 
my  first  interview  with  Bertha ;  and  I  was  waiting  with  eager 
curiosity  to  know  whether  or  not  my  vision  of  Prague  would 
prove  to  have  been  an  instance  of  the  same  kind.  A  few  days 
after  the  incident  of  the  opal  ring,  we  were  paying  one  of  our 
frequent  visits  to  the  Lichtenberg  Palace.  I  could  never  look 
at  many  pictures  in  succession  ;  for  pictures,  when  they  are 
at  all  powerful,  affect  me  so  strongly  that  one  or  two  exhaust 
all  my  capability  of  contemplation.  This  morning  I  had  been 
looking  at  Giorgione’s  picture  of  the  cruel-eyed  woman,  said 
to  be  a  likeness  of  Lucrezia  Borgia.  I  had  stood  long  alone 
before  it,  fascinated  by  the  terrible  reality  of  that  cunning, 
relentless  face,  till  I  felt  a  strange  poisoned  sensation,  as  if  I 
had  long  been  inhaling  a  fatal  odor,  and  was  just  beginning 
to  be  conscious  of  its  effects.  Perhaps  even  then  I  should  not 
have  moved  away,  if  the  rest  of  the  party  had  not  returned 
to  this  room,  and  announced  that  they  were  going  to  the  Bel¬ 
vedere  Gallery  to  settle  a  bet  which  had  arisen  between  my 
brother  and  Mr.  Filmore  about  a  portrait.  I  followed  them 
dreamily,  and  was  hardly  alive  to  what  occurred  till  they  had 
all  gone  up  to  the  gallery,  leaving  me  below ;  for  I  refused  to 
come  within  sight  of  another  picture  that  day.  I  made  my  way 
to  the  Grand  Terrace,  since  it  was  agreed  that  we  should  saun¬ 
ter  in  the  gardens  when  the  dispute  had  been  decided.  I  had 
been  sitting  here  a  short  space,  vaguely  conscious  of  trim  gar¬ 
dens,  with  a  city  and  green  hills  in  the  distance,  when,  wishing 
to  avoid  the  proximity  of  the  sentinel,  I  rose  and  walked  down 
the  broad  stone  steps,  intending  to  seat  myself  farther  on  in 
the  gardens.  Just  as  I  reached  the  gravel-walk,  I  felt  an  arm 


446 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


slipped  within  mine,  and  a  light  hand  gently  pressing*  tny 
wrist.  In  the  same  instant  a  strange  intoxicating  numbness 
passed  over  me,  like  the  continuance  or  climax  of  the  sensa¬ 
tion  I  was  still  feeling  from  the  gaze  of  Lucrezia  Borgia.  The 
gardens,  the  summer  sky,  the  consciousness  of  Bertha’s  arm 
being  within  mine,  all  vanished,  and  I  seemed  to  be  suddenly 
in  darkness,  out  of  wThich  there  gradually  broke  a  dim  firelight, 
and  I  felt  myself  sitting  in  my  father’s  leather  chair  in  the 
library  at  home.  I  knew  the  fireplace  —  the  dogs  for  the  wood* 
fire  —  the  black  marble  chimney-piece  with  the  white  marble 
medallion  of  the  dying  Cleopatra  in  the  centre.  Intense  and 
hopeless  misery  was  pressing  on  my  soul ;  the  light  becam< 
stronger,  for  Bertha  was  entering  with  a  candle  in  her  hand  — 
Bertha,  my  wife  —  with  cruel  eyes,  with  green  jewels  and 
green  leaves  on  her  white  ball-dress  ;  every  hateful  thought 
within  her  present  to  me.  .  .  .  “  Madman,  idiot !  why  don’t 
you  kill  yourself,  then  ?  ”  It  was  a  moment  of  hell.  I  saw 
into  her  pitiless  soul  —  saw  its  barren  worldliness,  its  scorch¬ 
ing  hate  —  and  felt  it  clothe  me  round  like  an  air  I  was  obliged 
to  breathe.  She  came  with  her  candle  and  stood  over  me  with 
a  bitter  smile  of  contempt;  I  saw  the  great  emerald  brooch 
on  her  bosom,  a  studded  serpent  with  diamond  eyes.  I  shud¬ 
dered  —  I  despised  this  woman  with  the  barren  soul  and  mean 
thoughts ;  but  I  felt  helpless  before  her,  as  if  she  clutched 
my  bleeding  heart,  and  would  clutch  it  till  the  last  drop  of 
life-blood  ebbed  away.  She  was  my  wife,  and  we  hated  each 
other.  Gradually  the  hearth,  the  dim  library,  the  candle-light 
disappeared  —  seemed  to  melt  away  into  a  background  of 
light,  the  green  serpent  with  the  diamond  eyes  remaining  a 
dark  image  on  the  retina.  Then  I  had  a  sense  of  my  eyelids 
quivering,  and  the  living  daylight  broke  in  upon  me ;  I  saw 
gardens,  and  heard  voices  ;  I  was  seated  on  the  steps  of  the 
Belvedere  Terrace,  and  my  friends  were  round  me. 

The  tumult  of  mind  into  which  I  was  thrown  by  this  hideous 
vision  made  me  ill  for  several  days,  and  prolonged  our  stay  at 
Vienna.  I  shuddered  with  horror  as  the  scene  recurred  to  me ; 
and  it  recurred  constantly,  with  all  its  minutiae,  as  if  they  had 
been  burnt  into  my  memory ;  and  yet,  such  is  the  madness  of 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


447 


the  human  heart  under  the  influence  of  its  immediate  desires, 
I  felt  a  wild  hell-braving  joy  that  Bertha  was  to  be  mine ;  for 
the  fulfilment  of  my  former  prevision  concerning  her  first 
appearance  before  me,  left  me  little  hope  that  this  last  hideous 
glimpse  of  the  future  was  the  mere  diseased  play  of  my  own 
mind,  and  had  no  relation  to  external  realities.  One  thing 
alone  I  looked  towards  as  a  possible  means  of  casting  doubt 
on  my  terrible  conviction  —  the  discovery  that  my  vision  of 
Prague  had  been  false  —  and  Prague  was  the  next  city  on  our 
route. 

Meanwhile,  I  was  no  sooner  in  Bertha’s  society  again,  than 
I  was  as  completely  under  her  sway  as  before.  What  if  I  saw 
into  the  heart  of  Bertha,  the  matured  woman  —  Bertha,  my 
wife  ?  Bertha,  the  girl ,  was  a  fascinating  secret  to  me  still : 
I  trembled  under  her  touch ;  I  felt  the  witchery  of  her  pres¬ 
ence  ;  I  yearned  to  be  assured  of  her  love.  The  fear  of  poison 
is  feeble  against  the  sense  of  thirst.  Nay,  I  was  just  as  jeal¬ 
ous  of  my  brother  as  before  —  just  as  much  irritated  by  his 
small  patronizing  ways ;  for  my  pride,  my  diseased  sensibility, 
were  there  as  they  had  always  been,  and  winced  as  inevitably 
under  every  offence  as  my  eye  winced  from  an  intruding  mote. 
The  future,  even  when  brought  within  the  compass  of  feeling 
by  a  vision  that  made  me  shudder,  had  still  no  more  than  the 
force  of  an  idea,  compared  with  the  force  of  present  emotion 
—  of  my  love  for  Bertha,  of  my  dislike  and  jealousy  towards 
my  brother. 

It  is  an  old  story,  that  men  sell  themselves  to  the  tempter, 
and  sign  a  bond  with  their  blood,  because  it  is  only  to  take 
effect  at  a  distant  day ;  then  rush  on  to  snatch  the  cup  their 
souls  thirst  after  with  an  impulse  not  the  less  savage  because 
there  is  a  dark  shadow  beside  them  forevermore.  There  is 
no  short  cut,  no  patent  tram-road  to  wisdom  :  after  all  the 
centuries  of  invention,  the  soul’s  path  lies  through  the  thorny 
wilderness  which  must  be  still  trodden  in  solitude,  with  bleed¬ 
ing  feet,  with  sobs  for  help,  as  it  was  trodden  by  them  of  old 
time. 

My  mind  speculated  eagerly  on  the  means  by  which  I  should 
become  my  brother’s  successful  rival,  for  I  was  still  too  timid, 


448 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


in  my  ignorance  of  Bertha’s  actual  feeling,  to  venture  on  any 
step  that  would  urge  from  her  an  avowal  of  it.  I  thought  I 
should  gain  confidence  even  for  this,  if  my  vision  of  Prague 
proved  to  have  been  veracious ;  and  yet,  the  horror  of  that 
certitude !  Behind  the  slim  girl  Bertha,  whose  words  and 
looks  I  watched  for,  whose  touch  was  bliss,  there  stood  con¬ 
tinually  that  Bertha  with  the  fuller  form,  the  harder  eyes,  the 
more  rigid  mouth,  — with  the  barren  selfish  soul  laid  bare  ;  no 
longer  a  fascinating  secret,  but  a  measured  fact,  urging  itself 
perpetually  on  my  unwilling  sight.  Are  you  unable  to  give 
me  your  sympathy  —  you  who  read  this?  Are  you  unable  to 
imagine  this  double  consciousness  at  work  within  me,  flowing 
on  like  two  parallel  streams  which  never  mingle  their  waters 
and  blend  into  a  common  hue  ?  Yet  you  must  have  known 
something  of  the  presentiments  that  spring  from  an  insight  at 
war  with  passion  ;  and  my  visions  were  only  like  presenti¬ 
ments  intensified  to  horror.  You  have  known  the  powerless¬ 
ness  of  ideas  before  the  might  of  impulse ;  and  my  visions, 
when  once  they  had  passed  into  memory,  were  mere  ideas  — 
pale  shadows  that  beckoned  in  vain,  while  my  hand  was 
grasped  by  the  living  and  the  loved. 

In  after  days  I  thought  with  bitter  regret  that  if  I  had  fore¬ 
seen  something  more  or  something  different  —  if  instead  of 
that  hideous  vision  which  poisoned  the  passion  it  could  not 
destroy,  or  if  even  along  with  it  I  could  have  had  a  foreshadow¬ 
ing  of  that  moment  when  I  looked  on  my  brother’s  face  for 
the  last  time,  some  softening  influence  would  have  been  shed 
over  my  feeling  towards  him  :  pride  and  hatred  would  surely 
have  been  subdued  into  pity,  and  the  record  of  those  hidden 
sins  would  have  been  shortened.  But  this  is  one  of  the  vain 
thoughts  with  which  we  men  flatter  ourselves.  We  try  to 
believe  that  the  egoism  within  us  would  have  easily  been 
melted,  and  that  it  was  only  the  narrowness  of  our  knowledge 
which  hemmed  in  our  generosity,  our  awe,  our  human  piety, 
and  hindered  them  from  submerging  our  hard  indifference  to 
the  sensations  and  emotions  of  our  fellow.  Our  tenderness 
and  self-renunciation  seem  strong  when  our  egoism  has  had  its 
day  —  when,  after  our  mea_,  striving  for  a  triumph  that  is  tc 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL.  449 

be  another’s  loss,  the  triumph  comes  suddenly,  and  we  shudder 
at  it,  because  it  is  held  out  by  the  chill  hand  of  death. 

Our  arrival  in  Prague  happened  at  night,  and  I  was  glad  of 
this,  for  it  seemed  like  a  deferring  of  a  terribly  decisive  mo¬ 
ment,  to  be  in  the  city  for  hours  without  seeing  it.  As  we 
were  not  to  remain  long  in  Prague,  but  to  go  on  speedily  to 
Dresden,  it  was  proposed  that  we  should  drive  out  the  next 
morning  and  take  a  general  view  of  the  place,  as  well  as  visit 
some  of  its  specially  interesting  spots,  before  the  heat  became 
oppressive  —  for  we  were  in  August,  and  the  season  was  hot 
and  dry.  But  it  happened  that  the  ladies  were  rather  late  at 
their  morning  toilet,  and  to  my  father’s  politely  repressed  but 
perceptible  annoyance,  we  were  not  in  the  carriage  till  the 
morning  was  far  advanced.  I  thought  with  a  sense  of  relief, 
as  we  entered  the  Jews’  quarter,  where  we  were  to  visit  the 
old  synagogue,  that  we  should  be  kept  in  this  flat,  shut-up 
part  of  the  city,  until  we  should  all  be  too  tired  and  too  warm 
to  go  farther,  and  so  we  should  return  without  seeing  more 
than  the  streets  through  which  we  had  already  passed.  That 
would  give  me  another  day’s  suspense  —  suspense,  the  only 
form  in  which  a  fearful  spirit  knows  the  solace  of  hope.  But, 
as  I  stood  under  the  blackened,  groined  arches  of  that  old 
synagogue,  made  dimly  visible  by  the  seven  thin  candles  in 
the  sacred  lamp,  while  our  Jewish  cicerone  reached  down  the 
Book  of  the  Law,  and  read  to  us  in  its  ancient  tongue,  —  I 
felt  a  shuddering  impression  that  this  strange  building,  with 
its  shrunken  lights,  this  surviving  withered  remnant  of  medi¬ 
aeval  Judaism,  was  of  a  piece  with  my  vision.  Those  darkened 
dusty  Christian  saints,  with  their  loftier  arches  and  their  larger 
candles,  needed  the  consolatory  scorn  with  which  they  might 
point  to  a  more  shrivelled  death-in-life  than  their  own. 

As  I  expected,  when  we  left  the  Jews’  quarter  the  elders  of 
our  party  wished  to  return  to  the  hotel.  But  now,  instead  of 
rejoicing  in  this,  as  I  had  done  beforehand,  I  felt  a  sudden 
overpowering  impulse  to  go  on  at  once  to  the  bridge,  and  put 
an  end  to  the  suspense  I  had  been  wishing  to  protract  I  de¬ 
clared,  with  unusual  decision,  that  T  would  get  out  of  the  car¬ 
riage  and  walk  on  alone  ;  they  might  return  without  me.  My 


MOL-  XX. 


450 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


father,  thinking  this  merely  a  sample  of  my  usual  “  poetic 
nonsense,”  objected  that  I  should  only  do  myself  harm  by 
walking  in  the  heat ;  but  when  I  persisted,  he  said  angrily 
that  I  might  follow  my  own  absurd  devices,  but  that  Schmidt 
(our  courier)  must  go  with  me.  I  assented  to  this,  and  set  off 
with  Schmidt  towards  the  bridge.  I  had  no  sooner  passed 
from  under  the  archway  of  the  grand  old  gate  leading  on  to 
the  bridge,  than  a  trembling  seized  me,  and  I  turned  cold 
under  the  mid-day  sun  ;  yet  I  went  on  ;  I  was  in  search  of 
something  —  a  small  detail  which  I  remembered  with  special 
intensity  as  part  of  my  vision.  There  it  was  —  the  patch  of 
rainbow  light  on  the  pavement  transmitted  through  a  lamp  in 
the  shape  of  a  star. 


♦ 


CHAPTER  II. 

Before  the  autumn  was  at  an  end,  and  while  the  brown 
leaves  still  stood  thick  on  the  beeches  in  our  park,  my  brother 
and  Bertha  were  engaged  to  each  other,  and  it  was  understood 
that  their  marriage  was  to  take  place  early  in  the  next  spring. 
In  spite  of  the  certainty  I  had  felt  from  that  moment  on  the 
bridge  at  Prague,  that  Bertha  would  one  day  be  my  wife,  my 
constitutional  timidity  and  distrust  had  continued  to  benumb 
me,  and  the  words  in  which  I  had  sometimes  premeditated  a 
confession  of  my  love,  had  died  away  unuttered.  The  same 
conflict  had  gone  on  within  me  as  before  —  the  longing  for  an 
assurance  of  love  from  Bertha’s  lips,  the  dread  lest  a  word  of 
contempt  and  denial  should  fall  upon  me  like  a  corrosive  acid. 
What  was  the  conviction  of  a  distant  necessity  to  me  ?  I 
trembled  under  a  present  glance,  I  hungered  after  a  present 
joy,  I  was  clogged  and  chilled  by  a  present  fear.  And  so  the 
days  passed  on :  I  witnessed  Bertha’s  engagement  and  heard 
her  marriage  discussed  as  if  I  were  under  a  conscious  night¬ 
mare  —  knowing  it  was  a  dream  that  would  vanish,  but  feel¬ 
ing  stifled  under  the  grasp  of  hard-clutching  fingers. 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


451 


When  I  was  not  in  Bertha’s  presence  —  and  I  was  with  her 
very  often,  for  she  continued  to  treat  me  with  a  playful 
patronage  that  wakened  no  jealousy  in  my  brother  —  I  spent 
my  time  chiefly  in  wandering,  in  strolling,  or  taking  long 
rides  while  the  daylight  lasted,  and  then  shutting  myself  up 
with  my  unread  books ;  for  books  had  lost  the  power  of  chain¬ 
ing  my  attention.  My  self-consciousness  was  heightened  to 
that  pitch  of  intensity  in  which  our  own  emotions  take  the 
form  of  a  drama  which  urges  itself  imperatively  on  our  con¬ 
templation,  and  we  begin  to  weep,  less  under  the  sense  of  our 
suffering  than  at  the  thought  of  it.  I  felt  a  sort  of  pitying 
anguish  over  the  pathos  of  my  own  lot :  the  lot  of  a  being 
finely  organized  for  pain,  but  with  hardly  any  fibres  that 
responded  to  pleasure  —  to  whom  the  idea  of  future  evil 
robbed  the  present  of  its  joy,  and  for  whom  the  idea  of  future 
good  did  not  still  the  uneasiness  of  a  present  yearning  or  a 
present  dread.  I  went  dumbly  through  that  stage  of  the 
poet’s  suffering,  in  which  he  feels  the  delicious  pang  of  utter- 
ance,  and  makes  an  image  of  his  sorrows. 

I  was  left  entirely  without  remonstrance  concerning  this 
dreamy  wayward  life  :  I  knew  my  father’s  thought  about  me : 
“  That  lad  will  never  be  good  for  anything  in  life :  he  may 
waste  his  years  in  an  insignificant  way  on  the  income  that  falls 
to  him  :  I  shall  not  trouble  myself  about  a  career  for  him.” 

One  mild  morning  in  the  beginning  of  November,  it  hap¬ 
pened  that  I  was  standing  outside  the  portico  patting  lazy  old 
Caesar,  a  Newfoundland  almost  blind  with  age,  the  only  dog 
that  ever  took  any  notice  of  me  —  for  the  very  dogs  shunned 
me,  and  fawned  on  the  happier  people  about  me  —  when  the 
groom  brought  up  my  brother’s  horse  which  was  to  carry  him 
to  the  hunt,  and  my  brother  himself  appeared  at  the  door, 
florid,  broad-chested,  and  self-complacent,  feeling  what  a  good- 
natured  fellow  he  was  not  to  behave  insolently  to  us  all  on 
the  strength  of  his  great  advantages. 

“Latimer,  old  boy,”  he  said  to  me  in  a  tone  of  compassion¬ 
ate  Qordiality,  “  what  a  pity  it  is  you  don’t  have  a  run  with 
the  hounds  now  and  then  1  The  finest  thing  in  the  world  foi 
low  spirits  1  ” 


452 


THE  LISTED  VEIL. 


“  Low  spirits  !  ”  I  thought  bitterly,  as  he  rode  away , 
“  that  is  the  sort  of  phrase  with  which  coarse,  narrow  natures 
like  yours  think  to  describe  experience  of  which  you  can 
know  no  more  than  your  horse  knows.  It  is  to  such  as 
you  that  the  good  of  this  world  falls  :  ready  dulness,  healthy 
selfishness,  good-tempered  conceit  —  these  are  the  keys  to 
happiness.” 

The  quick  thought  came,  that  my  selfishness  was  even 
stronger  than  his  —  it  was  only  a  suffering  selfishness  instead 
of  an  enjoying  one.  But  then,  again,  my  exasperating  insight 
into  Alfred’s  self-complacent  soul,  his  freedom  from  all  the 
doubts  and  fears,  the  unsatisfied  yearnings,  the  exquisite  tor¬ 
tures  of  sensitiveness,  that  had  made  the  web  of  my  life, 
seemed  to  absolve  me  from  all  bonds  towards  him.  This  man 
needed  no  pity,  no  love  ;  those  fine  influences  would  have  been 
as  little  felt  by  him  as  the  delicate  white  mist  is  felt  by  the 
rock  it  caresses.  There  was  no  evil  in  store  for  him :  if  he 
was  not  to  marry  Bertha,  it  would  be  because  he  had  found  a 
lot  pleasanter  to  himself. 

Mr.  Filmore’s  house  lay  not  more  than  half  a  mile  beyond 
our  own  gates,  and  whenever  I  knew  my  brother  was  gone 
in  another  direction,  I  went  there  for  the  chance  of  finding 
Bertha  at  home.  Later  on  in  the  day  I  walked  thither.  By 
a  rare  accident  she  was  alone,  and  we  walked  out  in  the 
grounds  together,  for  she  seldom  went  on  foot  beyond  the 
trimly  swept  gravel-walks.  I  remember  what  a  beautiful 
sylph  she  looked  to  me  as  the  low  November  sun  shone  on 
her  blond  hair,  and  she  tripped  along  teasing  me  with  her 
usual  light  banter,  to  which  I  listened  half  fondly,  half 
moodily ;  it  was  all  the  sign  Bertha’s  mysterious  inner  self 
ever  made  to  me.  To-day  perhaps  the  moodiness  predomi¬ 
nated,  for  I  had  not  yet  shaken  off  the  access  of  jealous  hate 
which  my  brother  had  raised  in  me  by  his  parting  patronage. 
Suddenly  I  interrupted  and  startled  her  by  saying,  almost 
fiercely,  “Bertha,  how  can  you  love  Alfred?” 

She  looked  at  me  with  surprise  for  a  moment,  but  soon  her 
light  smile  came  again,  and  she  answered  sarcastically,  “  Why 
do  you  suppose  I  love  him  ?  ” 


455 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 

“  How  can  you  ask  that,  Bertha  ?  ” 

“  What !  your  wisdom  thinks  I  must  love  the  man  I ’m 
going  to  marry  ?  The  most  unpleasant  thing  in  the  world.  I 
should  quarrel  with  him ;  I  should  be  jealous  of  him ;  our 
menage  would  be  conducted  in  a  very  ill-bred  manner.  A 
little  quiet  contempt  contributes  greatly  to  the  elegance  of 
life.”  ' 

“  Bertha,  that  is  not  your  real  feeling.  Why  do  you  delight 
in  trying  to  deceive  me  by  inventing  such  cynical  speeches  ?  ” 

“  I  need  never  take  the  trouble  of  invention  in  order  to 
deceive  you,  my  small  Tasso  ”  —  (that  was  the  mocking  name  1 
she  usually  gave  me).  “  The  easiest  way  to  deceive  a  poet  is 
to  tell  him  the  truth.” 

She  was  testing  the  validity  of  her  epigram  in  a  daring  way, 
and  for  a  moment  the  shadow  of  my  vision  —  the  Bertha 
whose  soul  was  no  secret  to  me  —  passed  between  me  and  the 
radiant  girl,  the  playful  sylph  whose  feelings  were  a  fascinat¬ 
ing  mystery.  I  sujjpose  I  must  have  shuddered,  or  betrayed  in 
some  other  way  my  momentary  chill  of  horror. 

“  Tasso !  ”  she  said,  seizing  my  wrist,  and  peeping  round 
into  my  face,  “  are  you  really  beginning  to  discern  what  a 
heartless  girl  I  am  ?  Why,  you  are  not  half  the  poet  I 
thought  you  were ;  you  are  actually  capable  of  believing  the 
truth  about  me.” 

The  shadow  passed  from  between  us,  and  was  no  longer  the 
object  nearest  to  me.  The  girl  whose  light  fingers  grasped 
me,  whose  elfish  charming  face  looked  into  mine  —  who,  I 
thought,  was  betraying  an  interest  in  my  feelings  that  she 
would  not  have  directly  avowed,  —  this  warm-breathing  pres¬ 
ence  again  possessed  my  senses  and  imagination  like  a  return¬ 
ing  syren  melody  which  had  been  overpowered  for  an  instant 
by  the  roar  of  threatening  waves.  It  was  a  moment  as  deli¬ 
cious  to  me  as  the  waking  up  to  a  consciousness  of  youth  after 
a  dream  of  middle  age.  I  forgot  everything  but  my  passion, 
and  said  with  swimming  eyes  — 

“  Bertha,  shall  you  love  me  when  we  are  first  married  ? 

I  would  n’t  mind  if  you  really  loved  me  only  for  a  little 
while.” 


454 


THE  LIFTED  yEIL. 

Her  look  of  astonishment,  as  she  loosed  my  hand  and  started 
away  from  me,  recalled  me  to  a  sense  of  my  strange,  my  crimi¬ 
nal  indiscretion. 

“  Forgive  me,”  I  said,  hurriedly,  as  soon  as  I  could  speak 
again ;  “  I  did  not  know  what  I  was  saying.” 

“  Ah,  Tasso’s  mad  fit  has  come  on,  I  see,”  she  answered 
quietly,  for  she  had  recovered  herself  sooner  than  I  had. 
“  Let  him  go  home  and  keep  his  head  cool.  I  must  go  in,  for 
the  sun  is  setting.” 

I  left  her  —  full  of  indignation  against  myself.  I  had  let 
slip  words  which,  if  she  reflected  on  them,  might  rouse  in  her 
a  suspicion  of  my  abnormal  mental  condition  —  a  suspicion 
which  of  all  things  I  dreaded.  And  besides  that,  I  was 
ashamed  of  the  apparent  baseness  I  had  committed  in  utter¬ 
ing  them  to  my  brother’s  betrothed  wife.  I  wandered  home 
slowly,  entering  our  park  through  a  private  gate  instead  of 
by  the  lodges.  As  I  approached  the  house,  I  saw  a  man 
dashing  off  at  full  speed  from  the  stable-yard  across  the  park. 
Had  any  accident  happened  at  home  ?  No ;  perhaps  it  was 
only  one  of  my  father’s  peremptory  business  errands  that 
required  this  headlong  haste.  Nevertheless  I  quickened  my 
pace  without  any  distinct  motive,  and  was  soon  at  the  house. 
I  will  not  dwell  on  the  scene  I  found  there.  My  brother  was 
dead  —  had  been  pitched  from  his  horse,  and  killed  on  the 
spot  by  a  concussion  of  the  brain. 

I  went  up  to  the  room  where  he  lay,  and  where  my  father 
was  seated  beside  him  with  a  look  of  rigid  despair.  I  had 
shunned  my  father  more  than  any  one  since  our  return  home, 
for  the  radical  antipathy  between  our  natures  made  my  insight 
into  his  inner  self  a  constant  affliction  to  me.  But  now,  as 
I  went  up  to  him,  and  stood  beside  him  in  sad  silence,  I  felt 
the  presence  of  a  new  element  that  blended  us  as  we  had 
never  been  blent  before.  My  father  had  been  one  of  the  most 
successful  men  in  the  money-getting  world  :  he  had  had  no 
sentimental  sufferings,  no  illness.  The  heaviest  trouble  that 
had  befallen  him  was  the  death  of  his  first  wife.  But  he 
married  my  mother  soon  after ;  and  I  remember  he  seemed 
exactly  the  same,  to  my  keen  childish  observation,  the  week 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


455 


after  her  death  as  before.  But  now,  at  last,  a  sorrow  had 
come  —  the  sorrow  of  old  age,  which  suffers  the  more  from 
the  crushing  of  its  pride  and  its  hopes,  in  proportion  as  the 
pride  and  hope  are  narrow  and  prosaic.  His  son  was  to  have 
been  married  soon  —  would  probably  have  stood  for  the 
borough  at  the  next  election.  That  son's  existence  was  the 
best  motive  that  could  be  alleged  for  making  new  purchases 
of  land  every  year  to  round  off  the  estate.  It  is  a  dreary 
thing  to  live  on  doing  the  same  things  year  after  year,  with¬ 
out  knowing  why  we  do  them.  Perhaps  the  tragedy  of  dis¬ 
appointed  youth  and  passion  is  less  piteous  than  the  tragedy 
of  disappointed  age  and  worldliness. 

As  I  saw  into  the  desolation  of  my  father’s  heart,  I  felt  a 
movement  of  deep  pity  towards  him,  which  was  the  beginning 
of  a  new  affection  —  an  affection  that  grew  and  strengthened 
in  spite  of  the  strange  bitterness  with  which  he  regarded  me 
in  the  first  month  or  two  after  my  brother’s  death.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  the  softening  influence  of  my  compassion  for  him 
—  the  first  deep  compassion  I  had  ever  felt  —  I  should  have 
been  stung  by  the  perception  that  my  father  transferred  the 
inheritance  of  an  eldest  son  to  me  with  a  mortified  sense  that 
fate  had  compelled  him  to  the  unwelcome  course  of  caring  for 
me  as  an  important  being.  It  was  only  in  spite  of  himself 
that  he  began  to  think  of  me  with  anxious  regard.  There  is 
hardly  any  neglected  child  for  whom  death  has  made  vacant  a 
more  favored  place,  who  will  not  understand  what  I  mean. 

Gradually,  however,  my  new  deference  to  his  wishes,  the 
effect  of  that  patience  which  was  born  of  my  pity  for  him, 
won  upon  his  affection,  and  he  began  to  please  himself  with 
the  endeavor  to  make  me  fill  my  brother’s  place  as  fully  as  my 
feebler  personality  would  admit.  I  saw  that  the  prospect 
which  by-and-by  presented  itself  of  ray  becoming  Bertha’s  hus¬ 
band  was  welcome  to  him,  and  he  even  contemplated  in  my 
case  what  he  had  not  intended  in  my  brother’s  — that  his  son 
and  daughter-in-law  should  make  one  household  with  him. 
My  softened  feeling  towards  my  father  made  this  the  happiest 
time  I  had  known  since  childhood ;  —  these  last  months  in 
which  I  retained  the  delicious  illusion  of  loving  Bertha,  of 


456 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


longing  and  doubting  and  hoping  that  she  might  love  me. 
She  behaved  with  a  certain  new  consciousness  and  distance 
towards  me  after  my  brother’s  death ;  and  I  too  was  under 
a  double  constraint  —  that  of  delicacy  towards  my  brother’s 
memory,  and  of  anxiety  as  to  the  impression  my  abrupt  words 
had  left  on  her  mind.  But  the  additional  screen  this  mutual 
reserve  erected  between  us  only  brought  me  more  completely 
under  her  power:  no  matter  how  empty  the  adytum,  so  that 
the  veil  be  thick  enough.  So  absolute  is  our  soul’s  need  of 
something  hidden  and  uncertain  for  the  maintenance  of  that 
doubt  and  hope  and  effort  which  are  the  breath  of  its  life,  that 
if  the  whole  future  were  laid  bare  to  us  beyond  to-day,  the 
interest  of  all  mankind  would  be  bent  on  the  hours  that  lie 
between  ;  we  should  pant  after  the  uncertainties  of  our  one 
morning  and  our  one  afternoon  ;  we  should  rush  fiercely  to  the 
Exchange  for  our  last  possibility  of  speculation,  of  success,  of 
disappointment ;  we  should  have  a  glut  of  political  prophets 
foretelling  a  crisis  or  a  no-crisis  within  the  only  twenty-four 
hours  left  open  to  prophecy.  Conceive  the  condition  of  the 
human  mind  if  all  propositions  whatsoever  were  self-evident 
except  one,  which  was  to  become  self-evident  at  the  close  of  a 
summer’s  day,  but  in  the  mean  time  might  be  the  subject  of 
question,  of  hypothesis,  of  debate.  Art  and  philosophy,  litera¬ 
ture  and  science,  would  fasten  like  bees  on  that  one  proposition 
which  had  the  honey  of  probability  in  it,  and  be  the  more 
eager  because  their  enjoyment  would  end  with  sunset.  Our 
impulses,  our  spiritual  activities,  no  more  adjust  themselves  to 
the  idea  of  their  future  nullity,  than  the  beating  of  our  heart, 
or  the  irritability  of  our  muscles. 

Bertha,  the  slim,  fair-haired  girl,  whose  present  thoughts 
and  emotions  were  an  enigma  to  me  amidst  the  fatiguing 
obviousness  of  the  other  minds  around  me,  was  as  absorbing 
to  me  as  a  single  unknown  to-day  —  as  a  single  hypothetic 
proposition  to  remain  problematic  till  sunset;  and  all  the 
cramped,  hemmed-in  belief  and  disbelief,  trust  and  distrust,  of 
my  nature,  welled  out  in  this  one  narrow  channel. 

And  she  made  me  believe  that  she  loved  me.  Without  ever 
quitting  her  tone  of  badinage  and  playful  superiority,  she 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


457 


intoxicated  me  with  the  sense  that  I  was  necessary  to  her,  that 
she  was  never  at  ease  unless  I  was  near  her,  submitting  to  her 
playful  tyrann}T.  It  costs  a  woman  so  little  effort  to  besot  us 
in  this  way !  A  half-repressed  word,  a  moment’s  unexpected 
silence,  even  an  easy  fit  of  petulance  on  our  account,  will  serve 
us  as  hashish  for  a  long  while.  Out  of  the  subtlest  web  of 
scarcely  perceptible  signs,  she  set  me  weaving  the  fancy  that 
she  had  always  unconsciously  loved  me  better  than  Alfred,  but 
that,  with  the  ignorant  fluttered  sensibility  of  a  young  girl, 
she  had  been  imposed  on  by  the  charm  that  lay  for  her  in 
the  distinction  of  being  admired  and  chosen  by  a  man  who 
made  so  brilliant  a  figure  in  the  world  as  my  brother.  She 
satirized  herself  in  a  very  graceful  way  for  her  vanity  and 
ambition.  What  was  it  to  me  that  I  had  the  light  of  my 
wretched  prevision  on  the  fact  that  now  it  was  I  who  possessed 
at  least  all  but  the  personal  part  of  my  brother’s  advantages  ? 
Our  sweet  illusions  are  half  of  them  conscious  illusions,  like 
effects  of  color  that  we  know  to  be  made  up  of  tinsel,  broken 
glass,  and  rags. 

We  were  married  eighteen  months  after  Alfred’s  death,  one 
cold,  clear  morning  in  April,  when  there  came  hail  and  sun¬ 
shine  both  together ;  and  Bertha,  in  her  white  silk  and  pale- 
green  leaves,  and  the  pale  hues  of  her  hair  and  face,  looked 
like  the  spirit  of  the  morning.  My  father  was  happier  than 
he  had  thought  of  being  again  :  my  marriage,  he  felt  sure, 
would  complete  the  desirable  modification  of  my  character, 
and  make  me  practical  and  worldly  enough  to  take  my  place 
in  society  among  sane  men.  For  he  delighted  in  Bertha’s  tact 
and  acuteness,  and  felt  sure  she  would  be  mistress  of  me,  and 
make  me  what  she  chose  :  I  was  only  twenty-one,  and  madly  in 
love  with  her.  Poor  father !  He  kept  that  hope  a  little  while 
after  our  first  year  of  marriage,  and  it  was  not  quite  extinct 
when  paralysis  came  and  saved  him  from  utter  disappointment. 

I  shall  hurry  through  the  rest  of  my  story,  not  dwelling  so 
much  as  I  have  hitherto  done  on  my  inward  experience.  When 
people  are  well  known  to  each  other,  they  talk  rather  of  what 
befalls  them  externally,  leaving  their  feelings  and  sentiments 
to  be  inferred. 


458 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


We  lived  in  a  round  of  visits  for  some  time  after  our  return 
home,  giving  splendid  dinner-parties,  and  making  a  sensation 
in  our  neighborhood  by  the  new  lustre  of  our  equipage,  for  my 
father  had  reserved  this  display  of  his  increased  wealth  for 
the  period  of  his  son’s  marriage  ;  and  we  gave  our  acquaint¬ 
ances  liberal  opportunity  for  remarking  that  it  was  a  pity  I 
made  so  poor  a  figure  as  an  heir  and  a  bridegroom.  The  ner¬ 
vous  fatigue  of  this  existence,  the  insincerities  and  platitudes 
which  I  had  to  live  through  twice  over  —  through  my  inner 
and  outward  sense  —  would  have  been  maddening  to  me,  if  I 
had  not  had  that  sort  of  intoxicated  callousness  which  came 
from  the  delights  of  a  first  passion.  A  bride  and  bridegroom, 
surrounded  by  all  the  appliances  of  wealth,  hurried  through 
the  day  by  the  whirl  of  society,  filling  their  solitary  moments 
with  hastily  snatched  caresses,  are  prepared  for  their  future 
life  together  as  the  novice  is  prepared  for  the  cloister  —  by 
experiencing  its  utmost  contrast. 

Through  all  these  crowded  excited  months,  Bertha’s  in¬ 
ward  self  remained  shrouded  from  me,  and  I  still  read  her 
thoughts  only  through  the  language  of  her  lips  and  demeanor : 
I  had  still  the  human  interest  of  wondering  whether  what  I 
did  and  said  pleased  her,  of  longing  to  hear  a  word  of  affec¬ 
tion,  of  giving  a  delicious  exaggeration  of  meaning  to  her  smile. 
But  I  was  conscious  of  a  growing  difference  in  her  manner 
towards  me  ;  sometimes  strong  enough  to  be  called  haughty 
coldness,  cutting  and  chilling  me  as  the  hail  had  done  that 
came  across  the  sunshine  on  our  marriage  morning  ;  some¬ 
times  only  perceptible  in  the  dexterous  avoidance  of  a  tete-a- 
tete  walk  or  dinner  to  which  I  had  been  looking  forward.  I 
had  been  deeply  pained  by  this  —  had  even  felt  a  sort  of 
crushing  of  the  heart,  from  the  sense  that  my  brief  day  of 
happiness  was  near  its  setting  ;  but  still  I  remained  dependent 
on  Bertha,  eager  for  the  last  rays  of  a  bliss  that  would  soon  be 
gone  forever,  hoping  and  watching  for  some  after-glow  more 
beautiful  from  the  impending  night. 

I  remember  —  how  should  I  not  remember  ?  —  the  time 
when  that  dependence  and  hope  utterly  left  me,  when  the 
sadness  I  had  felt  in  Bertha’s  growing  estrangement  became  a 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


459 


joy  that  I  looked  back  upon  with  longing,  as  a  man  might 
look  back  on  the  last  pains  in  a  paralyzed  limb.  It  was  just 
after  the  close  of  my  father’s  last  illness,  which  had  neces¬ 
sarily  withdrawn  us  from  society  and  thrown  us  more  upon 
each  other.  It  was  the  evening  of  my  father’s  death.  On 
that  evening  the  veil  which  had  shrouded  Bertha’s  soul  from 
me  —  had  made  me  find  in  her  alone  among  my  fellow-beings 
the  blessed  possibility  of  mystery,  and  doubt,  and  expectation 
—  was  first  withdrawn.  Perhaps  it  was  the  first  day  since 
the  beginning  of  my  passion  for  her,  in  which  that  passion 
was  completely  neutralized  by  the  presence  of  an  absorbing 
feeling  of  another  kind.  I  had  been  watching  by  my  father’s 
death-bed :  I  had  been  witnessing  the  last  fitful  yearning  glance 
his  soul  had  cast  back  on  the  spent  inheritance  of  life  —  the 
last  faint  consciousness  of  love  he  had  gathered  from  the  pres¬ 
sure  of  my  hand.  What  are  all  our  personal  loves  when  we 
have  been  sharing  in  that  supreme  agony  ?  In  the  first  mo¬ 
ments  when  we  come  away  from  the  presence  of  death,  every 
other  relation  to  the  living  is  merged,  to  our  feeling,  in  the 
great  relation  of  a  common  nature  and  a  common  destiny. 

In  that  state  of  mind  I  joined  Bertha  in  her  private  sitting- 
room.  She  was  seated  in  a  leaning  posture  on  a  settee,  with 
her  back  towards  the  door ;  the  great  rich  coils  of  her  pale 
blond  hair  surmounting  her  small  neck,  visible  above  the  back 
of  the  settee.  I  remember,  as  I  closed  the  door  behind  me,  a 
cold  tremulousness  seizing  me,  and  a  vague  sense  of  being 
hated  and  lonely  —  vague  and  strong,  like  a  presentiment. 
I  know  how  I  looked  at  that  moment,  for  I  saw  myself  in 
Bertha’s  thought  as  she  lifted  her  cutting  gray  eyes,  and 
looked  at  me :  a  miserable  ghost-seex*,  surrounded  by  phan¬ 
toms  in  the  noonday,  trembling  under  a  breeze  when  the 
leaves  were  still,  without  appetite  for  the  common  objects  of 
human  desire,  but  pining  after  the  moonbeams.  We  were 
front  to  front  with  each  other,  and  judged  each  other.  The 
terrible  moment  of  complete  illumination  had  come  to  me,  and 
I  saw  that  the  darkness  had  hidden  no  landscape  from  me, 
but  only  a  blank  prosaic  wall :  from  that  evening  forth,  through 
the  sickening  years  which  followed,  I  saw  all  round  the 


460 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


narrow  room  of  this  woman’s  soul  —  saw  petty  artifice  and 
mere  negation  where  I  had  delighted  to  believe  in  coy  sensi¬ 
bilities  and  in  wit  at  war  with  latent  feeling — saw  the  light 
floating  vanities  of  the  girl  defining  themselves  into  the 
systematic  coquetry,  the  scheming  selfishness,  of  the  woman 
—  saw  repulsion  and  antipathy  harden  into  cruel  hatred,  giv¬ 
ing  pain  only  for  the  sake  of  wreaking  itself. 

For  Bertha  too,  after  her  kind,  felt  the  bitterness  of  dis¬ 
illusion.  She  had  believed  that  my  wild  poet’s  passion  for 
her  would  make  me  her  slave ;  and  that,  being  her  slave,  I 
should  execute  her  will  in  all  things.  With  the  essential 
shallowness  of  a  negative,  unimaginative  nature,  she  was 
unable  to  conceive  the  fact  that  sensibilities  were  anything 
else  than  weaknesses.  She  had  thought  my  weaknesses 
would  put  me  in  her  power,  and  she  found  them  unman¬ 
ageable  forces.  Our  positions  were  reversed.  Before  mar¬ 
riage  she  had  completely  mastered  my  imagination,  for  she 
was  a  secret  to  me  ;  and  I  created  the  unknown  thought  be¬ 
fore  which  I  trembled  as  if  it  were  hers.  But  now  that  her 
soul  was  laid  open  to  me,  now  that  I  was  compelled  to  share 
the  privacy  of  her  motives,  to  follow  all  the  petty  devices  that 
preceded  her  words  and  acts,  she  found  herself  powerless 
with  me,  except  to  produce  in  me  the  chill  shudder  of  repul¬ 
sion  —  powerless,  because  I  could  be  acted  on  by  no  lever 
within  her  reach.  I  was  dead  to  worldly  ambitions,  to  social 
vanities,  to  all  the  incentives  within  the  compass  of  her 
narrow  imagination,  and  I  lived  under  influences  utterly  in¬ 
visible  to  her. 

She  was  really  pitiable  to  have  such  a  husband,  and  so  all 
the  world  thought.  A  graceful,  brilliant  woman,  like  Bertha, 
who  smiled  on  morning  callers,  made  a  figure  in  ball-rooms, 
and  was  capable  of  that  light  repartee  which,  from  such  a 
woman,  is  accepted  as  wit,  was  secure  of  carrying  off  all  sym¬ 
pathy  from  a  husband  who  was  sickly,  abstracted,  and,  as 
some  suspected,  crack-brained.  Even  the  servants  in  our 
house  gave  her  the  balance  of  their  regard  and  pity.  For 
there  were  no  audible  quarrels  between  us ;  our  alienation, 
our  repulsion  from  each  other,  lay  within  the  silence  of  our 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


461 


own  hearts ;  and  if  the  mistress  went  out  a  great  deal,  and 
seemed  to  dislike  the  master’s  society,  was  it  not  natural, 
poor  thing  ?  The  master  was  odd.  I  was  kind  and  just 
to  my  dependants,  but  I  excited  in  them  a  shrinking,  half- 
contemptuous  pity  ;  for  this  class  of  men  and-  women  are  but 
slightly  determined  in  their  estimate  of  others  by  general 
considerations,  or  even  experience,  of  character.  They  judge 
of  persons  as  they  judge  of  coins,  and  value  those  who  pass 
current  at  a  high  rate. 

After  a  time  I  interfered  so  little  with  Bertha’s  habits,  that 
it  might  seem  wonderful  how  her  hatred  towards  me  could 
grow  so  intense  and  active  as  it  did.  But  she  had  begun  to 
suspect,  by  some  involuntary  betrayals  of  mine,  that  there 
was  an  abnormal  power  of  penetration  in  me  —  that  fitfully, 
at  least,  I  was  strangely  cognizant  of  her  thoughts  and  inten¬ 
tions,  and  she  began  to  be  haunted  by  a  terror  of  me,  which 
alternated  every  now  and  then  with  defiance.  She  meditated 
continually  how  the  incubus  could  be  shaken  off  her  life  — 
how  she  could  be  freed  from  this  hateful  bond  to  a  being  whom 
she  at  once  despised  as  an  imbecile,  and  dreaded  as  an  inquisi¬ 
tor.  For  a  long  while  she  lived  in  the  hope  that  my  evident 
wretchedness  would  drive  me  to  the  commission  of  suicide; 
but  suicide  was  not  in  my  nature.  I  was  too  completely 
swayed  by  the  sense  that  I  was  in  the  grasp  of  unknown 
forces,  to  believe  in  my  power  of  self-release.  Towards  my 
own  destiny  I  had  become  entirely  passive ;  for  my  one  ardent 
desire  had  spent  itself,  and  impulse  no  longer  predominated 
over  knowledge.  For  this  reason  I  never  thought  of  taking 
any  steps  towards  a  complete  separation,  which  would  have 
made  our  alienation  evident  to  the  world.  Why  should  I 
rush  for  help  to  a  new  course,  when  I  was  only  suffering  from 
the  consequences  of  a  deed  which  had  been  the  act  of  my 
intensest  will  ?  That  would  have  been  the  logic  of  one  who 
had  desires  to  gratify,  and  I  had  no  desires.  But  Bertha  and 
I  lived  more  and  more  aloof  from  each  other.  The  rich  find 
it  easy  to  live  married  and  apart. 

That  course  of  our  life  which  I  have  indicated  in  a  few  sen¬ 
tences  filled  the  space  of  years.  So  much  misery  —  so  slow 


162 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


and  hideous  a  growth  of  hatred  and  sin,  may  be  compressed 
into  a  sentence  !  And  men  judge  of  each  other’s  lives  through 
this  summary  medium.  They  epitomize  the  experience  of 
their  fellow-mortal,  and  pronounce  judgment  on  him  in  neat 
syntax,  and  feel  themselves  wise  and  virtuous  —  conquerors 
over  the  temptations  they  define  in  well-selected  predicates. 
Seven  years  of  wretchedness  glide  glibly  over  the  lips  of  the 
man  who  has  never  counted  them  out  in  moments  of  chill 
disappointment,  of  head  and  heart  throbbings,  of  dread  and 
vain  wrestling,  of  remorse  and  despair.  We  learn  words  by 
rote,  but  not  their  meaning;  that  must  be  paid  for  with  our 
life-blood,  and  printed  in  the  subtle  fibres  of  our  nerves. 

But  I  will  hasten  to  finish  my  story.  Brevity  is  justified 
at  once  to  those  who  readily  understand,  and  to  those  who 
will  never  understand. 

Some  years  after  my  father’s  death,  I  was  sitting  by  the 
dim  firelight  in  my  library  one  January  evening  —  sitting  in 
the  leather  chair  that  used  to  be  my  father’s  —  when  Bertha 
appeared  at  the  door,  with  a  candle  in  her  hand,  and  advanced 
towards  me.  I  knew  the  ball-dress  she  had  on  —  the  white 
ball-dress,  with  the  green  jewels,  shone  upon  by  the  light  of 
the  wax  candle  which  lit  up  the  medallion  of  the  dying  Cleo¬ 
patra  on  the  mantel-piece.  Why  did  she  come  to  me  before 
going  out  ?  I  had  not  seen  her  in  the  library,  which  was  my 
habitual  place,  for  months.  Why  did  she  stand  before  me 
with  the  candle  in  her  hand,  with  her  cruel  contemptuous 
eyes  fixed  on  me,  and  the  glittering  serpent,  like  a  familiar 
demon,  on  her  breast  ?  For  a  moment  I  thought  this  fulfil¬ 
ment  of  my  vision  at  Vienna  marked  some  dreadful  crisis  in 
my  fate,  but  I  saw  nothing  in  Bertha’s  mind,  as  she  stood 
before  me,  except  scorn  for  the  look  of  overwhelming  misery 
with  which  I  sat  before  her.  .  .  .  “  Fool,  idiot,  why  don’t  you 
kill  yourself,  then  ?  ”  —  that  was  her  thought.  But  at  length 
her  thoughts  reverted  to  her  errand,  and  she  spoke  aloud.  The 
apparently  indifferent  nature  of  the  errand  seemed  to  make 
a  ridiculous  anticlimax  to  my  prevision  and  my  agitation. 

“  I  have  had  to  hire  a  new  maid.  Fletcher  is  going  to  be 
married,  and  she  wants  me  to  ask  you  to  let  her  husband  have 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


463 


the  public-house  and  farm  at  Molton.  I  wish  him  to  have  it. 
You  must  give  the  promise  now,  because  Fletcher  is  going  to¬ 
morrow  morning  —  and  quickly,  because  Ihn  in  a  hurry.” 

“Very  well;  you  may  promise  her,”  I  said,  indifferently, 
and  Bertha  swept  out  of  the  library  again. 

I  always  shrank  from  the  sight  of  a  new  person,  and  all  the 
more  when  it  was  a  person  whose  mental  life  was  likely  to 
weary  my  reluctant  insight  with  worldly  ignorant  trivialities. 
But  I  shrank  especially  from  the  sight  of  this  new  maid,  be¬ 
cause  her  advent  had  been  announced  to  me  at  a  moment  to 
which  I  could  not  cease  to  attach  some  fatality :  I  had  a  vague 
dread  that  I  should  find  her  mixed  up  with  the  dreary  drama 
of  my  life  —  that  some  new  sickening  vision  would  reveal  her 
to  me  as  an  evil  genius.  When  at  last  I  did  unavoidably  meet 
her,  the  vague  dread  was  changed  into  definite  disgust.  She 
was  a  tall,  wiry,  dark-eyed  woman,  this  Mrs.  Archer,  with  a 
face  handsome  enough  to  give  her  coarse  hard  nature  the 
odious  finish  of  bold,  self-confident  coquetry.  That  was 
enough  to  make  me  avoid  her,  quite  apart  from  the  con¬ 
temptuous  feeling  with  which  she  contemplated  me.  I  seldom 
saw  her ;  but  I  perceived  that  she  rapidly  became  a  favorite 
with  her  mistress,  and,  after  the  lapse  of  eight  or  nine  months, 
I  began  to  be  aware  that  there  had  arisen  in  Bertha’s  mind 
towards  this  woman  a  mingled  feeling  of  fear  and  dependence, 
and  that  this  feeling  was  associated  with  ill-defined  images  of 
candle-light  scenes  in  her  dressing-room,  and  the  locking  up  of 
something  in  Bertha’s  cabinet.  My  interviews  with  my  wife 
had  become  so  brief  and  so  rarely  solitary,  that  I  had  no 
opportunity  of  perceiving  these  images  in  her  mind  with  more 
definiteness.  The  recollections  of  the  past  become  contracted 
in  the  rapidity  of  thought  till  they  sometimes  bear  hardly  a 
more  distinct  resemblance  to  the  external  reality  than  the 
forms  of  an  oriental  alphabet  to  the  objects  that  suggested 
them. 

Besides,  for  the  last  year  or  more  a  modification  had  been 
going  forward  in  my  mental  condition,  and  was  growing  more 
and  more  marked.  My  insight  into  the  minds  of  those  around 
me  was  becoming  dimmer  and  more  fitful,  and  the  ideas  that 


464 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


crowded  my  double  consciousness  became  less  and  less  depend¬ 
ent  on  any  personal  contact.  All  that  was  personal  in  me 
seemed  to  be  suffering  a  gradual  death,  so  that  I  was  losing 
the  organ  through  which  the  personal  agitations  and  projects 
of  others  could  affect  me.  But  along  with  this  relief  from 
wearisome  insight,  there  was  a  new  development  of  what  I 
concluded  —  as  I  have  since  found  rightly  —  to  be  a  prevision 
of  external  scenes.  It  was  as  if  the  relation  between  me  and 
my  fellow-men  was  more  and  more  deadened,  and  my  relation 
to  what  we  call  the  inanimate  was  quickened  into  new  life. 
The  more  I  lived  apart  from  society,  and  in  proportion  as  my 
wretchedness  subsided  from  the  violent  throb  of  agonized 
passion  into  the  dulness  of  habitual  pain,  the  more  frequent 
and  vivid  became  such  visions  as  that  I  had  had  of  Prague  — 
of  strange  cities,  of  sandy  plains,  of  gigantic  ruins,  of  midnight 
skies  with  strange  bright  constellations,  of  mountain-passes, 
of  grassy  nooks  flecked  with  the  afternoon  sunshine  through 
the  boughs :  I  was  in  the  midst  of  such  scenes,  and  in  all  of 
them  one  presence  seemed  to  weigh  on  me  in  all  these  mighty 
shapes — the  presence  of  something  unknown  and  pitiless. 
For  continual  suffering  had  annihilated  religious  faith  within 
me  :  to  the  utterly  miserable  —  the  unloving  and  the  unloved 
—  there  is  no  religion  possible,  no  worship  but  a  worship  of 
devils.  And  beyond  all  these,  and  continually  recurring,  was 
the  vision  of  my  death  —  the  pangs,  the  suffocation,  the  last 
struggle,  when  life  would  be  grasped  at  in  vain. 

Things  were  in  this  state  near  the  end  of  the  seventh  year. 
I  had  become  entirely  free  from  insight,  from  my  abnormal 
cognizance  of  any  other  consciousness  than  my  own,  and  in¬ 
stead  of  intruding  involuntarily  into  the  world  of  other  minds, 
was  living  continually  in  my  own  solitary  future.  Bertha  was 
aware  that  I  was  greatly  changed.  To  my  surprise  she  had  of 
late  seemed  to  seek  opportunities  of  remaining  in  my  society, 
and  had  cultivated  that  kind  of  distant  yet  familiar  talk  which 
is  customary  between  a  husband  and  wife  who  live  in  polite 
and  irrevocable  alienation.  I  bore  this  with  languid  submis¬ 
sion,  and  without  feeling  enough  interest  in  her  motives  to  be 
roused  into  keen  observation ;  yet  1  could  not  help  perceiving 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


465 


something  triumphant  and  excited  in  her  carriage  and  the 
expression  of  her  face  —  something  too  subtle  to  express  itself 
in  words  or  tones,  but  giving  one  the  idea  that  she  lived  in  a 
state  of  expectation  or  hopeful  suspense.  My  chief  feeling 
was  satisfaction  that  her  inner  self  was  once  more  shut  out 
from  me  ;  and  I  almost  revelled  for  the  moment  in  the  absent- 
melancholy  that  made  me  answer  her  at  cross  purposes,  and 
betray  utter  ignorance  of  what  she  had  been  saying.  I  re¬ 
member  well  the  look  and  the  smile  with  which  she  one  day 
said,  after  a  mistake  of  this  kind  on  my  part :  “  I  used  to 
think  you  were  a  clairvoyant,  and  that  was  the  reason  why 
you  were  so  bitter  against  other  clairvoyants,  wanting  to  keep 
your  monopoly  ;  but  I  see  now  you  have  become  rather  duller 
than  the  rest  of  the  world.” 

I  said  nothing  in  reply.  It  occurred  to  me  that  her  recent 
obtrusion  of  herself  upon  me  might  have  been  prompted  by 
the  wish  to  test  my  power  of  detecting  some  of  her  secrets  ; 
but  I  let  the  thought  drop  again  at  once :  her  motives  and  her 
deeds  had  no  interest  for  me,  and  whatever  pleasures  she 
might  be  seeking,  I  had  no  wish  to  balk  her.  There  was  still 
pity  in  my  soul  for  every  living  thing,  and  Bertha  was  living 
—  was  surrounded  with  possibilities  of  misery. 

Just  at  this  time  there  occurred  an  event  which  roused  me 
somewhat  from  my  inertia,  and  gave  me  an  interest  in  the 
passing  moment  that  I  had  thought  impossible  for  me.  It 
was  a  visit  from  Charles  Meunier,  who  had  written  me  word 
that  he  was  coming  to  England  for  relaxation  from  too  strenu¬ 
ous  labor,  and  would  like  to  see  me.  Meunier  had  now  a 
European  reputation  ;  but  his  letter  to  me  expressed  that  keen 
remembrance  of  an  early  regard,  an  early  debt  of  sympathy, 
which  is  inseparable  from  nobility  of  character :  and  I  too 
felt  as  if  his  presence  would  be  to  me  like  a  transient  resur¬ 
rection  into  a  happier  pre-existence. 

He  came,  and  as  far  as  possible,  I  renewed  our  old  pleasure 
of  making  tete-a-tete  excursions,  though,  instead  of  mountains* 
and  glaciers  and  the  wide  blue  lake,  wre  had  to  content  our¬ 
selves  with  mere  slopes  and  ponds  and  artificial  plantations. 
The  years  had  changed  us  both,  but  with  what  different  result ! 

£0 


VOL.  IX. 


466 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


Meunier  was  now  a  brilliant  figure  in  society,  to  whom  ele¬ 
gant  women  pretended  to  listen,  and  whose  acquaintance  was 
boasted  of  by  noblemen  ambitious  of  brains.  He  repressed 
with  the  utmost  delicacy  all  betrayal  of  the  shock  which  I  am 
sure  he  must  have  received  from  our  meeting,  or  of  a  desire  to 
penetrate  into  my  condition  and  circumstances,  and  sought  by 
the  utmost  exertion  of  his  charming  social  powers  to  make 
our  reunion  agreeable.  Bertha  was  much  struck  by  the  unex¬ 
pected  fascinations  of  a  visitor  whom  she  had  expected  to  find 
presentable  only  on  the  score  of  his  celebrity,  and  put  forth 
all  her  coquetries  and  accomplishments.  Apparently  she  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  attracting  his  admiration,  for  his  manner  towards 
her  was  attentive  and  flattering.  The  effect  of  his  presence 
on  me  was  so  benignant,  especially  in  those  renewals  of  our 
old  tete-a-tete  wanderings,  when  he  poured  forth  to  me  won¬ 
derful  narratives  of  his  professional  experience,  that  more 
than  once,  when  his  talk  turned  on  the  psychological  rela¬ 
tions  of  disease,  the  thought  crossed  my  mind  that,  if  his 
stay  with  me  were  long  enough,  I  might  possibly  bring  myself 
to  tell  this  man  the  secrets  of  my  lot.  Might  there  not  lie 
some  remedy  for  vie ,  too,  in  his  science  ?  Might  there  not  at 
least  lie  some  comprehension  and  sympathy  ready  for  me  in 
his  large  and  susceptible  mind  ?  But  the  thought  only  flick¬ 
ered  feebly  now  and  then,  and  died  out  before  it  could  become 
a  wish.  The  horror  I  had  of  again  breaking  in  on  the  pri¬ 
vacy  of  another  soul,  made  me,  by  an  irrational  instinct,  draw 
the  shroud  of  concealment  more  closely  around  my  own,  as 
we  automatically  perform  the  gesture  we  feel  to  be  wanting 
in  another. 

When  Meunier’s  visit  was  approaching  its  conclusion,  there 
happened  an  event  which  caused  some  excitement  in  our 
household,  owing  to  the  surprisingly  strong  effect  it  appeared 
to  produce  on  Bertha  —  on  Bertha,  the  self-possessed,  who 
usually  seemed  inaccessible  to  feminine  agitations,  and  did 
even  her  hate  in  a  self-restrained  hygienic  manner.  This 
event  was  the  sudden  severe  illness  of  her  maid,  Mrs.  Archer. 
I  have  reserved  to  this  moment  the  mention  of  a  circumstance 
which  had  forced  itself  on  my  notice  shortly  before  Meunier’s 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


467 


arrival,  namely,  that  there  had  been  some  quarrel  between 
Bertha  and  this  maid,  apparently  during  a  visit  to  a  distant 
family,  in  which  she  had  accompanied  her  mistress.  I  had 
overheard  Archer  speaking  in  a  tone  of  bitter  insolence,  which 
I  should  have  thought  an  adequate  reason  for  immediate 
dismissal.  No  dismissal  followed ;  on  the  contrary,  Bertha 
seemed  to  be  silently  putting  up  with  personal  inconveniences 
from  the  exhibitions  of  this  woman’s  temper.  I  was  the  more 
astonished  to  observe  that  her  illness  seemed  a  cause  of  strong 
solicitude  to  Bertha;  that  she  was  at  the  bedside  night  and 
day,  and  would  allow  no  one  else  to  officiate  as  head-nurse. 
It  happened  that  our  family  doctor  was  out  on  a  holiday,  an 
accident  which  made  Meunier’s  presence  in  the  house  doubly 
welcome,  and  he  apparently  entered  into  the  case  with  an  in¬ 
terest  which  seemed  so  much  stronger  than  the  ordinary  pro¬ 
fessional  feeling,  that  one  day  when  he  had  fallen  into  a  long 
fit  of  silence  after  visiting  her,  I  said  to  him  — 

“  Is  this  a  very  peculiar  case  of  disease,  Meunier  ?  ” 

“No,”  he  answered,  “it  is  an  attack  of  peritonitis,  which 
will  be  fatal,  but  which  does  not  differ  physically  from  many 
other  cases  that  have  come  under  my  observation.  But  I  ‘11 
tell  you  what  I  have  on  my  mind.  I  want  to  make  an  experi¬ 
ment  on  this  woman,  if  you  will  give  me  permission.  It  can 
do  her  no  harm  —  will  give  her  no  pain  —  for  I  shall  not  make 
it  until  life  is  extinct  to  all  purposes  of  sensation.  I  want  to 
try  the  effect  of  transfusing  blood  into  her  arteries  after  the 
heart  has  ceased  to  beat  for  some  minutes.  I  have  tried  the 
experiment  again  and  again  with  animals  that  have  died  of 
this  disease,  with  astounding  results,  and  I  want  to  try  it  on 
a  human  subject.  I  have  the  small  tubes  necessary,  in  a  case 
I  have  with  me,  and  the  rest  of  the  apparatus  could  be  pre¬ 
pared  readily.  I  should  use  my  own  blood  —  take  it  from  my 
own  arm.  This  woman  won’t  live  through  the  night,  I ’m  con¬ 
vinced,  and  I  want  you  to  promise  me  your  assistance  in  mak¬ 
ing  the  experiment.  I  can’t  do  without  another  hand,  but  it 
would  perhaps  not  be  well  to  call  in  a  medical  assistant  from 
among  your  provincial  doctors.  A  disagreeable  foolish  version 
of  the  thing  might  get  abroad.” 


408 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


“Have  you  spoken  to  my  wife  on  the  subject?”  I  said, 
“because  she  appears  to  be  peculiarly  sensitive  about  this 
woman :  she  has  been  a  favorite  maid.” 

“  To  tell  you  the  truth,”  said  Meunier,  “  I  don’t  want  her  to 
know  about  it.  There  are  always  insuperable  difficulties  with 
women  in  these  matters,  and  the  effect  on  the  supposed  dead 
body  may  be  startling.  You  and  I  will  sit  up  together,  and 
be  in  readiness.  When  certain  symptoms  appear  1  shall  take 
you  in,  and  at  the  right  moment  we  must  manage  to  get  every 
one  else  out  of  the  room.” 

I  need  not  give  our  farther  conversation  on  the  subject. 
He  entered  very  fully  into  the  details,  and  overcame  my 
repulsion  from  them,  by  exciting  in  me  a  mingled  awe  and 
curiosity  concerning  the  possible  results  of  his  experiment. 

We  prepared  everything,  and  he  instructed  me  in  my  part 
as  assistant.  He  had  not  told  Bertha  of  his  absolute  convic¬ 
tion  that  Archer  would  not  survive  through  the  night,  and 
endeavored  to  persuade  her  to  leave  the  patient  and  take  a 
night’s  rest.  But  she  was  obstinate,  suspecting  the  fact  that 
death  was  at  hand,  and  supposing  that  he  wished  merely  to  save 
her  nerves.  She  refused  to  leave  the  sick-room.  Meunier  and 
I  sat  up  together  in  the  library,  he  making  frequent  visits  to 
the  sick-room,  and  returning  with  the  information  that  the  case 
was  taking  precisely  the  course  he  expected.  Once  he  said  to 
me,  “  Can  you  imagine  any  cause  of  ill  feeling  this  woman 
has  against  her  mistress,  who  is  so  devoted  to  her  ?  ” 

“  I  think  there  was  some  misunderstanding  between  them 
before  her  illness.  Why  do  you  ask  ?  ” 

“  Because  I  have  observed  for  the  last  five  or  six  hours  — 
since,  I  fancy,  she  has  lost  all  hope  of  recovery  —  there  seems 
a  strange  prompting  in  her  to  say  something  which  pain  and 
failing  strength  forbid  her  to  utter;  and  there  is  a  look  of 
hideous  meaning  in  her  eyes,  which  she  turns  continually 
towards  her  mistress.  In  this  disease  the  mind  often  remains 
singularly  clear  to  the  last.” 

“I  am  not  surprised  at  an  indication  of  malevolent  feeling 
in  her,”  I  said.  “  She  is  a  woman  who  has  always  inspired 
me  with  distrust  and  dislike,  but  she  managed  to  insinuate 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


469 


herself  into  her  mistress’s  favor.”  He  was  silent  after  this, 
looking  at  the  fire  with  an  air  of  absorption,  till  he  went  up¬ 
stairs  again.  He  stayed  away  longer  than  usual,  and  on 
returning,  said  to  me  quietly,  “Come  now.” 

I  followed  him  to  the  chamber  where  death  was  hovering. 
The  dark  hangings  of  the  large  bed  made  a  background  that 
gave  a  strong  relief  to  Bertha’s  pale  face  as  I  entered.  She 
started  forward  as  she  saw  me  enter,  and  then  looked  at  Meu- 
nier  with  an  expression  of  angry  inquiry ;  but  he  lifted  up 
his  hand  as  if  to  impose  silence,  while  hs  fixed  his  glance  on 
the  dying  woman  and  felt  her  pulse.  The  face  was  pinched 
and  ghastly,  a  cold  perspiration  was  on  the  forehead,  and  the 
eyelids  were  lowered  so  as  almost  to  conceal  the  large  dark 
eyes.  After  a  minute  or  two,  Meunier  walked  round  to  the 
other  side  of  the  bed  where  Bertha  stood,  and  with  his  usual 
air  of  gentle  politeness  towards  her  begged  her  to  leave  the 
patient  under  our  care  —  everything  should  be  done  for  her  — 
she  was  no  longer  in  a  state  to  be  conscious  of  an  affectionate 
presence.  Bertha  was  hesitating,  apparently  almost  willing 
to  believe  his  assurance  and  to  comply.  She  looked  round  at 
the  ghastly  dying  face,  as  if  to  read  the  confirmation  of  that 
assurance,  when  for  a  moment  the  lowered  eyelids  were  raised 
again,  and  it  seemed  as  if  the  eyes  were  looking  towards  Ber¬ 
tha,  but  blankly.  A  shudder  passed  through  Bertha’s  frame, 
and  she  returned  to  her  station  near  the  pillow,  tacitly  imply¬ 
ing  that  she  would  not  leave  the  room. 

The  eyelids  were  lifted  no  more.  Once  I  looked  at  Bertha 
as  she  watched  the  face  of  the  dying  one.  She  wore  a  rich 
peignoir ,  and  her  blond  hair  was  half  covered  by  a  lace  cap  : 
in  her  attire  she  was,  as  always,  an  elegant  woman,  fit  to 
figure  in  a  picture  of  modern  aristocratic  life  :  but  I  asked 
myself  how  that  face  of  hers  could  ever  have  seemed  to  me 
the  face  of  a  woman  born  of  woman,  with  memories  of  child¬ 
hood,  capable  of  pain,  needing  to  be  fondled  ?  The  features 
at  that  moment  seemed  so  preternaturally  sharp,  the  eyes  were 
so  hard  and  eager  —  she  looked  like  a  cruel  immortal,  finding 
her  spiritual  feast  in  the  agonies  of  a  dying  race.  For  across 
those  hard  features  there  came  something  like  a  flash  when 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


4?0 

the  last  hour  had  been  breathed  out,  and  we  all  felt  that 
the  dark  veil  had  completely  fallen.  What  secret  was  there 
between  Bertha  and  this  woman  ?  I  turned  my  eyes  from  her 
with  a  horrible  dread  lest  my  insight  should  return,  and  I 
should  be  obliged  to  see  what  had  been  breeding  about  two 
unloving  women’s  hearts.  I  felt  that  Bertha  had  been  watch¬ 
ing  for  the  moment  of  death  as  the  sealing  of  her  secret :  I 
thanked  Heaven  it  could  remain  sealed  for  me. 

Meunier  said  quietly,  “  She  is  gone.”  He  then  gave  his  arm 
to  Bertha,  and  she  submitted  to  be  led  out  of  the  room. 

I  suppose  it  was  at  her  order  that  two  female  attendants 
came  into  the  room,  and  dismissed  the  younger  one  who  had 
been  present  before.  When  they  entered,  Meunier  had  already 
opened  the  artery  in  the  long  thin  neck  that  lay  rigid  on  the 
pillow,  and  I  dismissed  them,  ordering  them  to  remain  at  a 
distance  till  we  rang :  the  doctor,  I  said,  had  an  operation  to 
perform  —  he  was  not  sure  about  the  death.  For  the  next 
twenty  minutes  I  forgot  everything  but  Meunier  and  the  ex¬ 
periment  in  which  he  was  so  absorbed,  that  I  think  his  senses 
would  have  been  closed  against  all  sounds  or  sights  which  had 
no  relation  to  it.  It  was  my  task  at  first  to  keep  up  the  artificial 
respiration  in  the  body  after  the  transfusion  had  been  effected, 
but  presently  Meunier  relieved  me,  and  I  could  see  the  won¬ 
drous  slow  return  of  life  ;  the  breast  began  to  heave,  the 
inspirations  became  stronger,  the  eyelids  quivered,  and  the 
soul  seemed  to  have  returned  beneath  them.  The  artificial 
respiration  was  withdrawn  :  still  the  breathing  continued,  and 
there  was  a  movement  of  the  lips. 

Just  then  I  heard  the  handle  of  the  door  moving:  I  suppose 
Bertha  had  heard  from  the  women  that  they  had  been  dis¬ 
missed  :  probably  a  vague  fear  had  arisen  in  her  mind,  for  she 
entered  with  a  look  of  alarm.  She  came  to  the  foot  of  the  bed 
and  gave  a  stifled  cry. 

The  dead  woman’s  eyes  were  wide  open,  and  met  hers  in 
full  recognition  —  the  recognition  of  hate.  With  a  sudden 
strong  effort,  the  hand  that  Bertha  had  thought  forever  still 
was  pointed  towards  her,  and  the  haggard  face  moved.  The 
gasping  eager  voice  said  — 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


m 

“  You  mean  to  poison  your  husband  .  .  the  poison  is  in 
the  black  cabinet  ...  I  got  it  for  you  .  .  ,  you  laughed  at 
me,  and  told  lies  about  me  behind  my  back,  to  make  me 
disgusting  .  .  .  because  you  were  jealous  ...  are  you  sorry 
.  .  .  now  ?  ” 

The  lips  continued  to  murmur,  but  the  sounds  were  no 
longer  distinct.  Soon  there  was  no  sound  —  only  a  slight 
movement :  the  flame  had  leaped  out,  and  was  being  extin¬ 
guished  the  faster.  The  wretched  woman’s  heart-strings  had 
been  set  to  hatred  and  vengeance  ;  the  spirit  of  life  had  swept 
the  chords  for  an  instant,  and  was  gone  again  forever.  Great 
God !  Is  this  what  it  is  to  live  again  ...  to  wake  up  with 
our  unstilled  thirst  upon  us,  with  our  unuttered  curses  ris¬ 
ing  to  our  lips,  with  our  muscles  ready  to  act  out  their  half- 
committed  sins  ? 

Bertha  stood  pale  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  quivering  and 
helpless,  despairing  of  devices,  like  a  cunning  animal  whose 
hiding-places  are  surrounded  by  swift-advancing  flame.  Even 
Meunier  looked  paralyzed  ;  life  for  that  moment  ceased  to  be 
a  scientific  problem  to  him.  As  for  me,  this  scene  seemed  of 
one  texture  with  the  rest  of  my  existence :  horror  was  my 
familiar,  and  this  new  revelation  was  only  like  an  old  pain 
recurring  with  new  circumstances. 

•  ••••••• 

Since  then  Bertha  and  I  have  lived  apart  —  she  in  her  own 
neighborhood,  the  mistress  of  half  our  wealth,  I  as  a  wanderer 
in  foreign  countries,  until  I  came  to  this  Devonshire  nest  to 
die.  Bertha  lives  pitied  and  admired ;  for  what  had  I  against 
that  charming  woman,  whom  every  one  but  myself  could  have 
been  happy  with  ?  There  had  been  no  witness  of  the  scene  in 
the  dying  room  except  Meunier,  and  while  Meunier  lived  his 
lips  were  sealed  by  a  promise  to  me. 

Once  or  twice,  weary  of  wandering,  I  rested  in  a  favorite 
spot,  and  my  heart  went  out  towards  the  men  and  women  and 
children  whose  faces  were  becoming  familiar  to  me ;  but  I  was 
driven  away  again  in  terror  at  the  approach  of  my  old  insight 
—  driven  away  to  live  continually  with  the  one  Unknown 
Presenoe  revealed  and  yet  hidden  by  the  moving  curtain  of 


472 


THE  LIFTED  VEIL. 


the  earth  and  sky.  Till  at  last  disease  took  hold  of  me  and 
forced  me  to  rest  here — forced  me  to  live  in  dependence  on 
my  servants.  And  then  the  curse  of  insight  —  of  my  double 
consciousness,  came  again,  and  has  never  left  me.  I  know  all 
their  narrow  thoughts,  their  feeble  regard,  their  half-wearied 
pity. 

•  ••••••• 

It  is  the  20th  of  September,  1850.  I  know  these  figures  I 
have  just  written,  as  if  they  were  a  long  familiar  inscrip¬ 
tion.  I  have  seen  them  on  this  page  in  my  desk  unnumbered 
times,  when  the  scene  of  my  dying  struggle  has  opened  upon 

me.  •  •  » 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


Trompeurs,  c’est  pour  vous  que  j’ccris, 
Attendez  vous  a  la  pareille. 


La  Fontaihb. 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


— — • - 

CHAPTER  I. 

Among  the  many  fatalities  attending  the  bloom  of  young 
desire,  that  of  blindly  taking  to  the  confectionery  line  has 
not.  perhaps,  been  sufficiently  considered.  How  is  the  son  of  a 
British  yeoman,  who  has  been  fed  principally  on  salt  pork  and 
yeast  dumplings,  to  know  that  there  is  satiety  for  the  human 
stomach  even  in  a  paradise  of  glass  jars  full  of  sugared  al¬ 
monds  and  pink  lozenges,  and  that  the  tedium  of  life  can 
reach  a  pitch  where  plum-buns  at  discretion  cease  to  offer  the 
slightest  enticement  ?  Or  how,  at  the  tender  age  when  a  con¬ 
fectioner  seems  to  him  a  very  prince  whom  all  the  world 
must  envy,  —  who  breakfasts  on  macaroons,  dines  on  marengs, 
sups  on  twelfth-cake,  and  fills  up  the  intermediate  hours  with 
sugar-candy  or  peppermint,  —  how  is  he  to  foresee  the  day 
of  sad  wisdom,  when  he  will  discern  that  the  confectioner’s 
calling  is  not  socially  influential,  or  favorable  to  a  soaring 
ambition  ?  I  have  known  a  man  who  turned  out  to  have  a 
metaphysical  genius,  incautiously,  in  the  period  of  youthful 
buoyancy,  commence  his  career  as  a  dancing-master  ;  and  you 
may  imagine  the  use  that  was  made  of  this  initial  mistake  by 
opponents  who  felt  themselves  bound  to  warn  the  public 
against  his  doctrine  of  the  Inconceivable.  He  could  not  give 
up  his  dancing-lessons,  because  he  made  his  bread  by  them, 
and  metaphysics  would  not  have  found  him  in  so  much  as  salt 
to  his  bread.  It  was  really  the  same  with  Mr.  David  Faux 
and  the  confectionery  business.  His  uncle,  the  butler  at  the 
great  house  close  by  Brigford,  had  made  a  pet  of  him  in  his 
early  boyhood,  and  it  was  on  a  visit  to  this  uncle  that  the  con¬ 
fectioners’  shops  in  that  brilliant  town  had,  on  a  single  day, 


476 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


fired  Iris  tender  imagination.  He  carried  home  the  pleasing 
illusion  that  a  confectioner  must  be  at  once  the  happiest  and 
the  foremost  of  men,  since  the  things  he  made  were  not  only 
the  most  beautiful  to  behold,  but  the  very  best  eating,  and 
such  as  the  Lord  Mayor  must  always  order  largely  for  his 
private  recreation ;  so  that  when  his  father  declared  he  must 
be  put  to  a  trade,  David  chose  his  line  without  a  moment’s 
hesitation ;  and,  with  a  rashness  inspired  by  a  sweet  tooth, 
wedded  himself  irrevocably  to  confectionery.  Soon,  however, 
the  tooth  lost  its  relish  and  fell  into  blank  indifference ;  and 
all  the  while,  his  mind  expanded,  his  ambition  took  new 
shapes,  which  could  hardly  be  satisfied  within  the  sphere  his 
youthful  ardor  had  chosen.  But  what  was  he  to  do  ?  He 
was  a  young  man  of  much  mental  activity,  and,  above  all, 
gifted  with  a  spirit  of  contrivance  ;  but  then,  his  faculties 
would  not  tell  with  great  effect  in  any  other  medium  than 
that  of  candied  sugars,  conserves,  and  pastry.  Say  what  you 
will  about  the  identity  of  the  reasoning  process  in  all  branches 
of  thought,  or  about  the  advantage  of  coming  to  subjects  with 
a  fresh  mind,  the  adjustment  of  butter  to  flour,  and  of  heat  to 
pastry,  is  not  the  best  preparation  for  the  office  of  prime  min¬ 
ister  ;  besides,  in  the  present  imperfectly  organized  state  of 
society,  there  are  social  barriers.  David  could  invent  delight¬ 
ful  things  in  the  way  of  drop-cakes,  and  he  had  the  widest 
views  of  the  sugar  department ;  but  in  other  directions  he 
certainly  felt  hampered  by  the  want  of  knowledge  and  practi¬ 
cal  skill ;  and  the  world  is  so  inconveniently  constituted,  that 
the  vague  consciousness  of  being  a  fine  fellow  is  no  guarantee 
of  success  in  any  line  of  business. 

This  difficulty  pressed  with  some  severity  on  Mr.  David 
Faux,  even  before  his  apprenticeship  was  ended.  His  soul 
swelled  with  an  impatient  sense  that  he  ought  to  become 
something  very  remarkable  —  that  it  was  quite  out  of  the 
question  for  him  to  put  up  with  a  narrow  lot  as  other  men 
did  :  he  scorned  the  idea  that  he  could  accept  an  average-  He 
was  sure  there  was  nothing  average  about  him  :  even  such  a 
person  as  Mrs.  Tibbits,  the  washerwoman,  perceived  it,  and 
probably  had  a  preference  for  his  linen.  At  that  particular 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


477 


period  Re  was  weighing  out  gingerbread-nuts  ;  but  such  an 
anomaly  could  not  continue.  No  position  could  be  suited  to 
Mr.  David  Faux  that  was  not  in  the  highest  degree  easy  to 
the  flesh  and  flattering  to  the  spirit.  If  he  nad  fallen  on  the 
present  times,  and  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  a  Mechanics’ 
Institute,  he  would  certainly  have  taken  to  literature  and 
have  written  reviews  ;  but  his  education  had  not  been  liberal. 
He  had  read  some  novels  from  the  adjoining  circulating 
library,  and  had  even  bought  the  story  of  “  Inkle  and  Yarico,” 
which  had  made  him  feel  very  sorry  for  poor  Mr.  Inkle  ;  so 
that  his  ideas  might  not  have  been  below  a  certain  mark  of 
the  literary  calling;  but  his  spelling  and  diction  were  too 
unconventional. 

When  a  man  is  not  adequately  appreciated  or  comfortably 
placed  in  his  own  country,  his  thoughts  naturally  turn  towards 
foreign  climes  ;  and  David’s  imagination  circled  round  and 
round  the  utmost  limits  of  his  geographical  knowledge,  in 
search  of  a  country  where  a  young  gentleman  of  pasty  vis¬ 
age,  lipless  mouth,  and  stumpy  hair,  would  be  likely  to  be 
received  with  the  hospitable  enthusiasm  which  he  had  a  right 
to  expect.  Having  a  general  idea  of  America  as  a  country 
where  the  population  was  chiefly  black,  it  appeared  to  him 
the  most  propitious  destination  for  an  emigrant  who,  to  begin 
with,  had  the  broad  and  easily  recognizable  merit  of  white¬ 
ness  ;  and  this  idea  gradually  took  such  strong  possession  of 
him  that  Satan  seized  the  opportunity  of  suggesting  to  him 
that  he  might  emigrate  under  easier  circumstances,  if  he  sup¬ 
plied  himself  with  a  little  money  from  his  master’s  till.  But 
that  evil  spirit,  whose  understanding,  I  am  convinced,  has 
been  much  overrated,  quite  wasted  his  time  on  this  occasion. 
David  would  certainly  have  liked  well  to  have  some  of  his 
master’s  money  in  his  pocket,  if  he  had  been  sure  his  master 
would  have  been  the  only  man  to  suffer  for  it ;  but  he  was  a 
cautious  youth,  and  quite  determined  to  run  no  risks  on  his 
own  account.  So  he  stayed  out  his  apprenticeship,  and  com¬ 
mitted  no  act  of  dishonesty  that  was  at  all  likely  to  be 
discovered,  reserving  his  plan  of  emigration  for  a  future  op¬ 
portunity.  And  the  circumstances  under  which  he  carried  it 


178 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


out  were  in  this  wise.  Having  been  at  home  a  week  or  two 
partaking  of  the  family  beans,  he  had  used  his  leisure  in  as¬ 
certaining  a  fact  which  was  of  considerable  importance  to 
him,  namely,  that  his  mother  had  a  small  sum  in  guineas 
painfully  saved  from  her  maiden  perquisites,  and  kept  in  the 
corner  of  a  drawer  where  her  baby-linen  had  reposed  for  the 
last  twenty  years  —  ever  since  her  son  David  had  taken  to  his 
feet,  with  a  slight  promise  of  bow-legs  which  had  not  been 
altogether  unfulfilled.  Mr.  Faux,  senior,  had  told  his  son 
very  frankly,  that  he  must  not  look  to  being  set  up  in  business 
by  him :  with  seven  sons,  and  one  of  them  a  very  healthy  and 
well-developed  idiot,  who  consumed  a  dumpling  about  eight 
inches  in  diameter  every  day,  it  was  pretty  well  if  they  got 
a  hundred  apiece  at  his  death.  Under  these  circumstances, 
what  was  David  to  do  ?  It  was  certainly  hard  that  he  should 
take  his  mother’s  money ;  but  he  saw  no  other  ready  means 
of  getting  any,  and  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  a  young 
man  of  his  merit  should  put  up  with  inconveniences  that 
could  be  avoided.  Besides,  it  is  not  robbery  to  take  property 
belonging  to  your  mother  :  she  does  n’t  prosecute  you.  And 
David  was  very  well  behaved  to  his  mother ;  he  comforted 
her  by  speaking  highly  of  himself  to  her,  and  assuring  her 
that  he  never  fell  into  the  vices  he  saw  practised  by  other 
youths  of  his  own  age,  and  that  he  was  particularly  fond  of 
nonesty  If  his  mother  would  have  given  him  her  twenty 
guineas  as  a  reward  of  this  noble  disposition,  he  really  would 
not  have  stolen  them  from  her,  and  it  would  have  been  more 
agreeable  to  his  feelings.  Nevertheless,  to  an  active  mind 
like  David’s,  ingenuity  is  not  without  its  pleasures  :  it  was 
rather  an  interesting  occupation  to  become  stealthily  ac¬ 
quainted  with  the  wards  of  his  mother’s  simple  key  (not  in 
the  least  like  Chubb’s  patent),  and  to  get  one  that  would  do 
its  work  equally  well ;  and  also  to  arrange  a  little  drama  by 
which  he  would  escape  suspicion,  and  run  no  risk  of  forfeiting 
the  prospective  hundred  at  his  father’s  death,  which  would 
be  convenient  in  the  improbable  case  of  his  not  making  a  large 
fortune  in  the  “  Indies.” 

First,  he  spoke  freely  of  his  intention  to  start  shortly  for 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


47S 


Liverpool  and  take  ship  for  America  ;  a  resolution  which  cost 
his  good  mother  some  pain,  fox*,  after  Jacob  the  idiot,  there 
wa9  not  one  of  her  sons  to  whom  her  heart  clung  more  than 
to  her  youngest-born,  David.  Next,  it  appeared  to  him  that 
Sunday  afternoon,  when  everybody  was  gone  to  church  except 
Jacob  and  the  cow-boy,  was  so  singularly  favorable  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  for  sons  who  wanted  to  appropriate  their  mothers’ 
guineas,  that  he  half  thought  it  must  have  been  kindly  in¬ 
tended  by  Providence  for  such  purposes.  Especially  the  third 
Sunday  in  Lent ;  because  Jacob  had  been  out  on  one  of  his 
occasional  wanderings  for  the  last  two  days ;  and  David, 
being  a  timid  young  man,  had  a  considerable  dread  and  hatred 
of  Jacob,  as  of  a  large  personage  who  went  about  habitually 
with  a  pitchfork  in  his  hand. 

Nothing  could  be  easiei*,  then,  than  for  David  on  this  Sunday 
afternoon  to  decline  going  to  church,  on  the  ground  that  he  was 
going  to  tea  at  Mr.  Lunn’s,  whose  pretty  daughter.  Sally  had 
been  an  early  flame  of  his,  and,  when  the  church-goers  were 
at  a  safe  distance,  to  abstract  the  guineas  from  their  wooden 
box  and  slip  them  into  a  small  canvas  bag  —  nothing  easier 
than  to  call  to  the  cow-boy  that  he  was  going,  and  tell  him  to 
keep  an  eye  on  the  house  for  fear  of  Sunday  tramps.  David 
thought  it  would  be  easy,  too,  to  get  to  a  small  thicket  and  bury 
his  bag  in  a  hole  he  had  already  made  and  covered  up  under 
the  roots  of  an  old  hollow  ash,  and  he  had,  in  fact,  found  the 
hole  without  a  moment’s  difficulty,  had  uncovered  it,  and  was 
about  gently  to  drop  the  bag  into  it,  when  the  sound  of  a  large 
body  rustling  towards  him  with  something  like  a  bellow  was 
such  a  surprise  to  David,  who,  as  a  gentleman  gifted  with  much 
contrivance,  was  naturally  only  prepared  for  what  he  expected, 
that  instead  of  dropping  the  bag  gently  he  let  it  fall  so  as  to 
make  it  untwist  and  vomit  forth  the  shining  guineas.  In  the 
same  moment  he  looked  up  and  saw  his  dear  brother  Jacob 
close  upon  him,  holding  the  pitchfork  so  that  the  bright  smooth 
prongs  were  a  yard  in  advance  of  his  own  body,  and  about  a 
foot  off  David’s.  (A  learned  friend,  to  whom  I  once  narrated 
this  liistor}r,  observed  that  it  was  David’s  guilt  which  made 
these  prongs  formidable,  and  that  the  mens  nil  conscia  sibi  strips 


180 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


a  pitchfork  of  all  terrors,  i  thought  this  idea  so  valuable,  that 
I  obtained  his  leave  to  use  it  on  condition  of  suppressing  his 
name.)  Nevertheless,  David  did  not  entirely  lose  his  presence 
of  mind  ;  for  in  that  case  he  would  have  sunk  on  the  earth  or 
started  backward ;  whereas  he  kept  his  ground  and  smiled  at 
Jacob,  who  nodded  his  head  up  and  down,  and  said,  “Hoich, 
Zavy  !  ”  in  a  painfully  equivocal  manner.  David’s  heart  was 
beating  audibly,  and  if  he  had  had  any  lips  they  would  have 
been  pale  ;  but  his  mental  activity,  instead  of  being  paralyzed, 
was  stimulated.  While  he  was  inwardly  praying  (he  always 
prayed  when  he  was  much  frightened),  —  “  Oh,  save  me  this 
once,  and  I  ’ll  never  get  into  danger  again  !  ”  —  he  was  thrust¬ 
ing  his  hand  into  his  pocket  in  search  of  a  box  of  yellow 
lozenges,  which  he  had  brought  with  him  from  Brigford  among 
other  delicacies  of  the  same  portable  kind,  as  a  means  of  con¬ 
ciliating  proud  beauty,  and  more  particularly  the  beauty  of 
Miss  Sarah  Lunn.  Not  one  of  these  delicacies  had  he  ever 
offered  to  poor  Jacob,  for  David  was  not  a  young  man  to  waste 
his  jujubes  and  barley-sugar  in  giving  pleasure  to  people  from 
whom  he  expected  nothing.  But  an  idiot  with  equivocal 
intentions  and  a  pitchfork  is  as  well  worth  flattering  and  cajol¬ 
ing  as  if  he  were  Louis  Napoleon.  So  David,  with  a  prompti¬ 
tude  equal  to  the  occasion,  drew  out  his  box  of  yellow  lozenges, 
lifted  the  lid,  and  performed  a  pantomime  with  his  mouth  and 
Angers,  which  was  meant  to  imply  that  he  was  delighted  to 
see  his  dear  brother  Jacob,  and  seized  the  opportunity  of 
making  him  a  small  present,  which  he  would  find  particularly 
agreeable  to  the  taste.  Jacob,  you  understand,  was  not  an 
intense  idiot,  but  within  a  certain  limited  range  knew  how  to 
choose  the  good  and  reject  the  evil :  he  took  one  lozenge,  by 
way  of  test,  and  sucked  it  as  if  he  had  been  a  philosopher ; 
then,  in  as  great  an  ecstasy  at  its  new  and  complex  savor  as 
Caliban  at  the  taste  of  Trinculo’s  wine,  chuckled  and  stroked 
this  suddenly  beneficent  brother,  and  held  out  his  hand  for 
more  ;  for,  except  in  fits  of  anger,  Jacob  was  not  ferocious  or 
needlessly  predatory.  David’s  courage  half  returned,  and  he 
left  off  praying  ;  pouring  a  dozen  lozenges  into  Jacob’s  palm, 
and  trying  to  look  very  fond  of  him.  He  congratulated  him 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


48) 


self  that  he  had  formed  the  plan  of  going  to  see  Miss  Sally 
Limn  this  afternoon,  and  that,  as  a  consequence,  he  had 
brought  with  him  these  propitiatory  delicacies :  he  was  cer¬ 
tainly  a  lucky  fellow  ;  indeed,  it  was  always  likely  Providence 
should  be  fonder  of  him  than  of  other  apprentices,  and  since 
he  was  to  be  interrupted,  why,  an  idiot  was  preferable  to  any 
other  sort  of  witness.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life,  David 
thought  he  saw  the  advantage  of  idiots. 

As  for  Jacob,  he  had  thrust  his  pitchfork  into  the  ground, 
and  had  thrown  himself  down  beside  it,  in  thorough  abandon¬ 
ment  to  the  unprecedented  pleasure  of  having  five  lozenges  in 
his  mouth  at  once,  blinking  meanwhile,  and  making  inarticu¬ 
late  sounds  of  gustative  content.  He  had  not  yet  given  any 
sign  of  noticing  the  guineas,  but  in  seating  himself  he  had 
laid  his  broad  right  hand  on  them,  and  unconsciously  kept  it 
in  that  position,  absorbed  in  the  sensations  of  his  palate.  If 
he  could  only  be  kept  so  occupied  with  the  lozenges  as  not  to 
see  the  guineas  before  David  could  manage  to  cover  them  ! 
That  was  David’s  best  hope  of  safety;  for  Jacob  knew  his 
mother’s  guineas  ;  it  had  been  part  of  their  common  experience 
as  boys  to  be  allowed  to  look  at  these  handsome  coins,  and 
rattle  them  in  their  box  on  high  days  and  holidays,  and  among 
all  Jacob’s  narrow  experiences  as  to  money,  this  was  likely  to 
be  the  most  memorable. 

“  Here,  Jacob,”  said  David,  in  an  insinuating  tone,  handing 
the  box  to  him,  “  I  ’ll  give  ’em  all  to  you.  Run !  —  make 
haste!  —  else  somebody  ’ll  come  and  take  ’em.” 

David,  not  having  studied  the  psychology  of  idiots,  was  not 
aware  that  they  are  not  to  be  wrought  upon  by  imaginative 
fears.  Jacob  took  the  box  with  his  left  hand,  but  saw  no 
necessity  for  running  away.  Was  ever  a  promising  young  man 
wishing  to  lay  the  foundation  of  his  fortune  by  appropriating 
his  mother’s  guineas  obstructed  by  such  a  day-mare  as  this  ? 
But  the  moment  must  come  when  Jacob  would  move  his  right 
hand  to  draw  off  the  lid  of  the  tin  box,  and  then  David  would 
sweep  the  guineas  into  the  hole  with  the  utmost  address  and 
swiftness,  and  immediately  seat  himself  upon  them.  Ah.  no 
It ’s  of  no  use  to  have  foresight  when  you  are  dealing  with  an 


>OL.  IX. 


482 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


idiot :  he  is  not  to  be  calculated  upon.  Jacob’s  right  hand 
was  given  to  vague  clutching  and  throwing;  it  suddenly 
clutched  the  guineas  as  if  they  had  been  so  many  pebbles, 
and  was  raised  in  an  attitude  which  promised  to  scatter  them 
like  seed  over  a  distant  bramble,  when,  from  some  prompting 
or  other  —  probably  of  an  unwonted  sensation  —  it  paused, 
descended  to  Jacob’s  knee,  and  opened  slowly  under  the 
inspection  of  Jacob’s  dull  eyes.  David  began  to  pray  again, 
but  immediately  desisted  —  another  resource  having  occurred 
to  him. 

“Mother!  zinnies!”  exclaimed  the  innocent  Jacob.  Then, 
looking  at  David,  he  said,  interrogatively,  “  Box  ?  ” 

“  Hush !  hush !  ”  said  David,  summoning  all  his  ingenuity 
in  this  severe  strait.  “See,  Jacob!”  He  took  the  tin  box 
from  his  brother’s  hand,  and  emptied  it  of  the  lozenges,  re¬ 
turning  half  of  them  to  Jacob,  but  secretly  keeping  the  rest 
in  his  own  hand.  Then  he  held  out  the  empty  box,  and  said, 
“Here’s  the  box,  Jacob!  The  box  for  the  guineas!”  gently 
sweeping  them  from  Jacob’s  palm  into  the  box. 

This  procedure  was  not  objectionable  to  Jacob;  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  the  guineas  clinked  so  pleasantly  as  they  fell,  that  he 
wished  for  a  repetition  of  the  sound,  and  seizing  the  box,  began 
to  rattle  it  very  gleefully.  David,  seizing  the  opportunity, 
deposited  his  reserve  of  lozenges  in  the  ground  and  hastily 
swept  some  earth  over  them.  “  Look,  Jacob  !  ”  he  said,  at 
last.  Jacob  paused  from  his  clinking,  and  looked  into  the 
hole,  while  David  began  to  scratch  away  the  earth,  as  if  in 
doubtful  expectation.  When  the  lozenges  were  laid  bare,  he 
took  them  out  one  by  one,  and  gave  them  to  Jacob. 

“Hush!”  he  said,  in  a  loud  whisper,  “Tell  nobody  —  all  for 
Jacob  —  hush — sh — sh  !  Put  guineas  in  the  hole  —  they  ’ll 
come  out  like  this  !  ”  To  make  the  lesson  more  complete,  he 
took  a  guinea,  and  lowering  it  into  the  hole,  said,  “Put  in  so.” 
Then,  as  he  took  the  last  lozenge  out,  he  said,  “  Come  out  so,” 
and  put  the  lozenge  into  Jacob’s  hospitable  mouth. 

Jacob  turned  his  head  on  one  side,  looked  first  at  his  brother 
and  then  at  the  hole,  like  a  reflective  monkey,  and,  finally, 
laid  the  box  of  guineas  in  the  hole  with  much  decision.  David 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


483 


made  haste  to  add  every  one  of  the  stray  coins,  put  on  the 
lid,  and  covered  it  well  with  earth,  saying  in  his  most  coaxing 
tone  — 

“ Take ’m  out  to-morrow,  Jacob;  all  for  Jacob!  Hush — sh 
— sh !  ” 

Jacob,  to  whom  this  once  indifferent  brother  had  all  at  once 
become  a  sort  of  sweet-tasted  fetish,  stroked  David’s  best  coat 
with  his  adhesive  fingers,  and  then  hugged  him  with  an  accom¬ 
paniment  of  that  mingled  chuckling  and  gargling  by  which 
he  was  accustomed  to  express  the  milder  passions.  But  if 
he  had  chosen  to  bite  a  small  morsel  out  of  his  beneficent 
brother’s  cheek,  David  would  have  been  obliged  to  bear  it. 

And  here  I  must  pause,  to  point  out  to  you  the  short-sighted¬ 
ness  of  human  contrivance.  This  ingenious  young  man,  Mr. 
David  Faux,  thought  he  had  achieved  a  triumph  of  cunning 
when  he  had  associated  himself  in  his  brother’s  rudimentary 
mind  with  the  flavor  of  yellow  lozenges.  But  he  had  yet  to 
learn  that  it  is  a  dreadful  thing  to  make  an  idiot  fond  of  you, 
when  you  yourself  are  not  of  an  affectionate  disposition : 
especially  an  idiot  with  a  pitchfork  —  obviously  a  difficult 
friend  to  shake  off  by  rough  usage. 

It  may  seem  to  you  rather  a  blundering  contrivance  for  a 
clever  young  man  to  bury  the  guineas.  But,  if  everything 
had  turned  out  as  David  had  calculated,  you  would  have  seen 
that  his  plan  was  worthy  of  his  talents.  The  guineas  would 
have  lain  safely  in  the  earth  while  the  theft  was  discovered, 
and  David,  with  the  calm  of  conscious  innocence,  would  have 
lingered  at  home,  reluctant  to  say  good-by  to  his  dear  mother 
while  she  was  in  grief  about  her  guineas ;  till  at  length,  on  the 
eve  of  his  departure,  he  would  have  disinterred  them  in  the 
strictest  privacy,  and  carried  them  on  his  own  person  without 
inconvenience.  But  David,  you  perceive,  had  reckoned  with¬ 
out  his  host,  or,  to  speak  more  precisely,  without  his  idiot 
brother  —  an  item  of  so  uncertain  and  fluctuating  a  character, 
that  I  doubt  whether  he  would  not  have  puzzled  the  astute 
heroes  of  M.  de  Balzac,  whose  foresight  is  so  remarkably  at 
home  in  the  future. 

It  was  clear  to  David  now  that  he  had  only  one  alternative 


484 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


before  him :  he  must  either  renounce  the  guineas,  by  quietly 
putting  them  back  in  his  mother’s  drawer  (a  course  not  un¬ 
attended  with  difficulty) ;  or  he  must  leave  more  than  a  suspicion 
behind  him,  by  departing  early  the  next  morning  without 
giving  notice,  and  with  the  guineas  in  his  pocket.  For  if 
he  gave  notice  that  he  was  going,  his  mother,  he  knew,  would 
insist  on  fetching  from  her  box  of  guineas  the  three  she  had 
always  promised  him  as  his  share ;  indeed,  in  his  original  plan, 
he  had  counted  on  this  as  a  means  by  which  the  theft  would 
be  discovered  under  circumstances  that  would  themselves 
speak  for  his  innocence ;  but  now,  as  I  need  hardly  explain, 
that  well-combined  plan  was  completely  frustrated.  Even  if 
David  could  have  bribed  Jacob  with  perpetual  lozenges,  an 
idiot’s  secrecy  is  itself  betrayal.  He  dared  not  even  go  to 
tea  at  Mr.  Lunn’s,  for  in  that  case  he  would  have  lost  sight 
of  Jacob,  who,  in  his  impatience  for  the  crop  of  lozenges,  might 
scratch  up  the  box  again  while  he  was  absent,  and  carry  it 
home  —  depriving  him  at  once  of  reputation  and  guineas. 
No !  he  must  think  of  nothing  all  the  rest  of  this  day,  but  of 
coaxing  Jacob  and  keeping  him  out  of  mischief.  It  was  a 
fatiguing  and  anxious  evening  to  David ;  nevertheless,  he 
dared  not  go  to  sleep  without  tying  a  piece  of  string  to  his 
thumb  and  great  toe,  to  secure  his  frequent  waking;  for  he 
meant  to  be  up  with  the  first  peep  of  dawn,  and  be  far  out  of 
reach  before  breakfast-time.  His  father,  he  thought,  would 
certainly  cut  him  off  with  a  shilling ;  but  what  then  ?  Such 
a  striking  young  man  as  he  would  be  sure  to  be  well  received 
in  the  West  Indies:  in  foreign  countries  there  are  always 
openings  —  even  for  cats.  It  was  probable  that  some  Princess 
Yarico  would  want  him  to  marry  her,  and  make  him  presents 
of  very  large  jewels  beforehand ;  after  which,  he  need  n’t 
marry  her  unless  he  liked.  David  had  made  up  his  mind 
not  to  steal  any  more,  even  from  people  who  were  fond  of 
him :  it  was  an  unpleasant  way  of  making  your  fortune  in  a 
world  where  you  were  likely  to  be  surprised  in  the  act  by 
brothers.  Such  alarms  did  not  agree  with  David’s  constitu¬ 
tion,  and  he  had  felt  so  much  nausea  this  evening  that  no  doubt 
his  liver  was  affected.  Besides,  he  would  have  been  greatly 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


485 


hurt  not  to  be  thought  well  of  in  the  world :  he  always  meant 
to  make  a  figure,  and  be  thought  worthy  of  the  best  seats  and 
the  best  morsels. 

Ruminating  to  this  effect  on  the  brilliant  future  in  reserve 
for  him,  David  by  the  help  of  his  check-string  kept  himself  on 
the  alert  to  seize  the  time  of  earliest  dawn  for  his  rising  and 
departure.  His  brothers,  of  course,  were  early  risers,  but  he 
should  anticipate  them  by  at  least  an  hour  and  a  half,  and  the 
little  room  which  he  had  to  himself  as  only  an  occasional  visi¬ 
tor,  had  its  window  over  the  horse-block,  so  that  he  could  slip 
out  through  the  window  without  the  least  difficulty.  Jacob, 
the  horrible  Jacob,  had  an  awkward  trick  of  getting  up  before' 
everybody  else,  to  stem  his  hunger  by  emptying  the  milk-bowl 
that  was  “duly  set”  for  him;  but  of  late  he  had  taken  to 
sleeping  in  the  hay-loft,  and  if  he  came  into  the  house,  it 
would  be  ou  the  opposite  side  to  that  from  which  David  was 
making  his  exit.  There  was  no  need  to  think  of  Jacob;  yet 
David  was  liberal  enough  to  bestow  a  curse  on  him  —  it  was 
the  only  thing  he  ever  did  bestow  gratuitously.  His  small 
bundle  of  clothes  was  ready  packed,  and  he  was  soon  treading 
lightly  on  the  steps  of  the  horse-block,  soon  walking  at  a  smart 
pace  across  the  fields  towards  the  thicket.  It  would  take  him 
no  more  than  two  minutes  to  get  out  the  box ;  he  could  make 
out  the  tree  it  was  under  by  the  pale  strip  where  the  bark  was 
off,  although  the  dawning  light  was  rather  dimmer  in  the 
thicket.  But  what,  in  the  name  of  —  burnt  pastry  —  was  that 
large  body  with  a  staff  planted  beside  it,  close  at  the  foot  of 
the  ash-tree  ?  David  paused,  not  to  make  up  his  mind  as  to 
the  nature  of  the  apparition  —  he  had  not  the  happiness  of 
doubting  for  a  moment  that  the  staff  was  Jacob’s  pitchfork  — 
but  to  gather  the  self-command  necessary  for  addressing  his 
brother  with  a  sufficiently  honeyed  accent.  Jacob  was  ab¬ 
sorbed  in  scratching  up  the  earth,  anc\  had  not  heard  David  s 
approach. 

“  I  say,  Jacob,”  said  David  in  a  loud  whisper,  just  as  the 
tin  box  was  lifted  out  of  the  hole. 

Jacob  looked  up,  and  discerning  his  sweet-flavored  brother, 
nodded  and  grinned  in  the  dim  light  in  a  way  that  made  him 


486 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


seem  to  David  like  a  triumphant  demon.  If  he  had  been  of 
an  impetuous  disposition,  he  would  have  snatched  the  pitch- 
fork  from  the  ground  and  impaled  this  fraternal  demon.  But 
David  was  by  no  means  impetuous  ,  he  was  a  young  man 
greatly  given  to  calculate  consequences,  a  habit  which  has 
been  held  to  be  the  foundation  of  virtue.  But  somehow  it  had 
not  precisely  that  effect  in  David :  he  calculated  whether  an 
action  would  harm  himself,  or  whether  it  would  only  harm 
other  people.  In  the  former  case  he  was  very  timid  about 
satisfying  his  immediate  desires,  but  in  the  latter  he  would 
risk  the  result  with  much  courage. 

“  Give  it  me,  Jacob,”  he  said,  stooping  down  and  patting  his 
brother.  “  Let  us  see.” 

Jacob,  finding  the  lid  rather  tight,  gave  the  box  to  his 
brother  in  perfect  faith.  David  raised  the  lid,  and  shook  his 
head,  while  Jacob  put  his  finger  in  and  took  out  a  guinea  to 
taste  whether  the  metamorphosis  into  lozenges  was  complete 
and  satisfactory. 

“No,  Jacob;  too  soon,  too  soon,”  said  David,  when  the 
guinea  had  been  tasted.  “  Give  it  me ;  we  ’ll  go  and  bury  it 
somewhere  else ;  we  ’ll  put  it  in  yonder,”  he  added,  pointing 
vaguely  toward  the  distance. 

David  screwed  on  the  lid,  while  Jacob,  looking  grave,  rose 
and  grasped  his  pitchfork.  Then,  seeing  David’s  bundle,  he 
snatched  it,  like  a  too  officious  Newfoundland,  stuck  his  pitch- 
fork  into  it  and  carried  it  over  his  shoulder  in  triumph  as  he 
accompanied  David  and  the  box  out  of  the  thicket. 

What  on  earth  was  David  to  do  ?  It  would  have  been  easy 
to  frown  at  J acob,  and  kick  him,  and  order  him  to  get  away ; 
but  David  dared  as  soon  have  kicked  the  bull.  Jacob  was 
quiet  as  long  as  he  was  treated  indulgently ;  but  on  the  slight¬ 
est  show  of  anger,  he  became  unmanageable,  and  was  liable  to 
fits  of  fury  which  would  have  made  him  formidable  even  with¬ 
out  his  pitchfork.  There  was  no  mastery  to  be  obtained  over 
him  except  by  kindness  or  guile.  David  tried  guile. 

“Go,  Jacob,”  he  said,  when  they  were  out  of  the  thicket  — 
pointing  towards  the  house  as  he  spoke ;  “  go  and  fetch  me  a 
spade  —  a  spade.  But  give  me  the  bundle,”  he  added,  trying 


BROTHER  JACOB.  487 

to  reach  it  from  the  fork,  where  it  hung  high  above  Jacob’s 
^all  shoulder. 

But  Jacob  showed  as  much  alacrity  in  obeying  as  a  wasp 
shows  in  leaving  a  sugar-basin.  Near  David,  he  felt  himself 
in  the  vicinity  of  lozenges :  he  chuckled  and  rubbed  his 
brother’s  back,  brandishing  the  bundle  higher  out  of  reach. 
David,  with  an  inward  groan,  changed  his  tactics,  and  walked 
on  as  fast  as  he  could.  It  was  not  safe  to  linger.  Jacob  would 
get  tired  of  following  him,  or,  at  all  events,  could  be  eluded. 
If  they  could  once  get  to  the  distant  highroad,  a  coach  would 
overtake  them,  David  would  mount  it,  having  previously  by 
some  ingenious  means  secured  his  bundle,  and  then  Jacob 
might  howl  and  flourish  his  pitchfork  as  much  as  he  liked. 
Meanwhile  he  was  under  the  fatal  necessity  of  being  very 
kind  to  this  ogre,  and  of  providing  a  large  breakfast  for  him 
when  they  stopped  at  a  roadside  inn.  It  was  already  three 
hours  since  they  had  started,  and  David  was  tired.  Would  no 
coach  be  coming  up  soon  ?  he  inquired.  No  coach  for  the 
next  two  hours.  But  there  was  a  carrier’s  cart  to  come  imme¬ 
diately,  ou  its  way  to  the  next  town.  If  he  could  slip  out, 
even  leaving  his  bundle  behind,  and  get  into  the  cart  without 
Jacob!  But  there  was  a  new  obstacle.  Jacob  had  recently 
discovered  a  remnant  of  sugar-candy  in  one  of  his  brother’s 
tail-pockets ;  and,  since  then,  had  cautiously  kept  his  hold  on 
that  limb  of  the  garment,  perhaps  with  an  expectation  that 
there  would  be  a  further  development  of  sugar-candy  after  a 
longer  or  shorter  interval.  Now  every  one  who  has  worn  a 
coat  will  understand  the  sensibilities  that  must  keep  a  man 
from  starting  away  in  a  hurry  when  there  is  a  grasp  on  his 
coat-tail.  David  looked  forward  to  being  well  received  among 
strangers,  but  it  might  make  a  difference  if  he  had  only  one 
tail  to  his  coat. 

He  felt  himself  in  a  cold  perspiration.  He  could  walk  no 
more :  he  must  get  into  the  cart  and  let  J acob  get  in  with 
him.  Presently  a  cheering  idea  occurred  to  him :  after  so 
large  a  breakfast,  Jacob  would  be  sure  to  go  to  sleep  m  the 
cart ;  you  see  at  once  that  David  meant  to  seize  his  bundle, 
jump  out,  and  be  free.  His  expectation  was  partly  fulfilled 


488 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


Jacob  did  go  to  sleep  in  the  cart,  but  it  was  in  a  peculiar 
attitude  —  it  was  with  his  arms  tightly  fastened  round  his 
dear  brother’s  body  ;  and  if  ever  David  attempted  to  move, 
the  grasp  tightened  with  the  force  of  an  affectionate  boa- 
constrictor. 

“  Th’  innicent ’s  fond  on  you,”  observed  the  carrier,  think¬ 
ing  that  David  was  probably  an  amiable  brother,  and  wishing 
to  pay  him  a  compliment. 

David  groaned.  The  ways  of  thieving  were  not  ways  of 
pleasantness.  Oh,  why  had  he  an  idiot  brother  ?  Or  why, 
in  general,  was  the  world  so  constituted  that  a  man  could  not 
take  his  mother’s  guineas  comfortably  ?  David  became  grimly 
speculative. 

Copious  dinner  at  noon  for  Jacob ;  but  little  dinner,  because 
little  appetite,  for  David.  Instead  of  eating,  he  plied  Jacob 
with  beer ;  for  through  this  liberality  he  descried  a  hope. 
Jacob  fell  into  a  dead  sleep,  at  last,  without  having  his  arms 
round  David,  who  paid  the  reckoning,  took  his  bundle,  and 
walked  off.  In  another  half-hour  he  was  on  the  coach  on  his 
way  to  Liverpool,  smiling  the  smile  of  the  triumphant  wicked. 
He  was  rid  of  Jacob  —  he  was  bound  for  the  Indies,  where  a 
gullible  princess  awaited  him.  He  would  never  steal  any 
more,  but  there  would  be  no  need ;  he  would  show  himself  so 
deserving,  that  people  would  make  him  presents  freely.  He 
must  give  up  the  notion  of  his  father’s  legacy ;  but  it  was  not 
likely  he  would  ever  want  that  trifle ;  and  even  if  he  did  — 
why,  it  was  a  compensatior  to  think  that  in  being  forever 
divided  from  his  family  he  \vas  divided  from  Jacob,  more 
terrible  than  Gorgon  or  D^mogorgon  to  David’s  timid  green 
“yes.  Thank  heaven,  he  should  never  see  Jacob  any  more  t 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


489 


CHAPTER  IL 

It  was  nearly  six  years  after  the  departure  of  Mr.  David 
Faux  for  the  West  Indies,  that  the  vacant  shop  in  the  market¬ 
place  at  Grimworth  was  understood  to  have  been  let  to  the 
stranger  with  a  sallow  complexion  and  a  buff  cravat,  whose 
first  appearance  had  caused  some  excitement  in  the  bar  of  the 
Woolpack,  where  he  had  called  to  wait  for  the  coach. 

Grimworth,  to  a  discerning  eye,  was  a  good  place  to  set  up 
shopkeeping  in.  There  was  no  competition  in  it  at  present ; 
the  Church-people  had  their  own  grocer  and  draper ;  the 
Dissenters  had  theirs  ;  and  the  two  or  three  butchers  found  a 
ready  market  for  their  joints  without  strict  reference  to  re¬ 
ligious  persuasion  —  except  that  the  rector’s  wife  had  given  a 
general  order  for  the  veal  sweet-breads  and  the  mutton  kid¬ 
neys,  while  Mr.  Rodd,  the  Baptist  minister,  had  requested 
that,  so  far  as  was  compatible  with  the  fair  accommodation 
of  other  customers,  the  sheep’s  trotters  might  be  reserved  for 
him.  And  it  was  likely  to  be  a  growing  place,  for  the  trustees 
of  Mr.  Zephaniah  Crypt’s  Charity,  under  the  stimulus  of  a 
late  visitation  by  commissioners,  were  beginning  to  apply 
long-accumulating  funds  to  the  rebuilding  of  the  Yellow  Coat 
School,  which  was  henceforth  to  be  carried  forward  on  a 
greatly  extended  scale,  the  testator  having  left  no  restrictions 
concerning  the  curriculum,  but  only  concerning  the  coat. 

The  shopkeepers  at  Grimworth  were  by  no  means  unani¬ 
mous  as  to  the  advantages  promised  by  this  prospect  of  in¬ 
creased  population  and  trading,  being  substantial  men,  who 
liked  doing  a  quiet  business  in  which  they  were  sure  of  their 
customers,  and  could  calculate  their  returns  to  a  nicety. 
Hitherto,  it  had  been  held  a  point  of  honor  by  the  families  in 
Grimworth  parish,  to  buy  their  sugar  and  their  flannel  at  the 
shops  where  their  fathers  and  mothers  had  bought  before 
them  j  but,  if  new-comers  were  to  bring  in  the  system  of  neck- 


490 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


and-neck  trading,  and  solicit  feminine  eyes  by  gown-pieces 
laid  in  fan-like  folds,  and  surmounted  by  artificial  flowers, 
giving  them  a  factitious  charm  (for  on  what  human  figure 
would  a  gown  sit  like  a  fan,  or  what  female  head  was  like  a 
bunch  of  China-asters  ?),  or,  if  new  grocers  were  to  fill  their 
windows  with  mountains  of  currants  and  sugar,  made  seduc* 
tive  by  contrast  and  tickets,  —  what  security  was  there  for 
Grimworth,  that  a  vagrant  spirit  in  shopping,  once  introduced, 
would  not  in  the  end  carry  the  most  important  families  to  the 
larger  market  town  of  Cattelton,  where,  business  being  done 
on  a  system  of  small  profits  and  quick  returns,  the  fashions 
were  of  the  freshest,  and  goods  of  all  kinds  might  be  bought 
at  an  advantage  ? 

With  this  view  of  the  times  predominant  among  the  trades¬ 
people  at  Grimworth,  their  uncertainty  concerning  the  nature 
of  the  business  which  the  sallow-complexioned  stranger  was 
about  to  set  up  in  the  vacant  shop,  naturally  gave  some  addi¬ 
tional  strength  to  the  fears  of  the  less  sanguine.  If  he  was 
going  to  sell  drapery,  it  was  probable  that  a  pale-faced  fellow 
like  that  would  deal  in  showy  and  inferior  articles  —  printed 
cottons  and  muslins  which  would  leave  their  dye  in  the  wash- 
tub,  jobbed  linen  full  of  knots,  and  flannel  that  would  soop 
look  like  gauze.  If  grocery,  then  it  was  to  be  hoped  that  no 
mother  of  a  family  would  trust  the  teas  of  an  untried  grocer. 
Such  things  had  been  known  in  some  parishes  as  tradesmen 
going  about  canvassing  for  custom  with  cards  in  their  pockets : 
when  people  came  from  nobody  knew  where,  there  was  no 
knowing  what  they  might  do.  It  was  a  thousand  pities  that 
Mr.  Moffat,  the  auctioneer  and  broker,  had  died  without  leav¬ 
ing  anybody  to  follow  him  in  the  business,  and  Mrs.  Cleve’s 
trustee  ought  to  have  known  better  than  to  let  a  shop  to  a 
stranger.  Even  the  discovery  that  ovens  were  being  put  up 
on  the  premises,  and  that  the  shop  was,  in  fact,  being  fitted 
up  for  a  confectioner  and  pastry-cook’s  business,  hitherto 
unknown  in  Grimworth,  did  not  quite  suffice  to  turn  the  scale 
in  the  new-comer’s  favor,  though  the  landlady  at  the  Wool- 
pack  defended  him  warmly,  said  he  seemed  to  be  a  very 
clever  young  man,  and  from  what  she  could  make  out,  came 


BROTHER  JACOB.  491 

of  a  very  good  family ;  indeed,  was  most  likely  a  good  many 
people’s  betters. 

It  certainly  made  a  blaze  of  light  and  color,  almost  as  if  a 
rainbow  had  suddenly  descended  into  the  market-place,  when, 
one  fine  morning,  the  shutters  were  taken  down  from  the  new 
shop,  and  the  two  windows  displayed  their  decorations.  On 
one  side,  there  were  the  variegated  tints  of  collared  and 
marbled  meats,  set  off  by  bright  green  leaves,  the  pale  brown 
of  glazed  pies,  the  rich  tones  of  sauces  and  bottled  fruits 
enclosed  in  their  veil  of  glass  —  altogether  a  sight  to  bring 
tears  into  the  eyes  of  a  Dutch  painter  ;  and  on  the  other, 
there  was  a  predominance  of  the  more  delicate  hues  of  pink, 
and  white,  and  yellow,  and  buff,  in  the  abundant  lozenges, 
candies,  sweet  biscuits  and  icings,  which  to  the  eyes  of  a 
bilious  person  might  easily  have  been  blended  into  a  faery 
landscape  in  Turner’s  latest  style.  What  a  sight  to  dawn 
upon  the  eyes  of  Grimworth  children !  They  almost  forgot  to 
go  to  their  dinner  that  day,  their  appetites  being  preoccupied 
with  imaginary  sugar-plums  ;  and  I  think  even  Punch,  setting 
up  his  tabernacle  in  the  market-place,  would  not  have  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  drawing  them  away  from  those  shop-windows,  where 
they  stood  according  to  gradations  of  size  and  strength,  the 
biggest  and  strongest  being  nearest  the  window,  and  the  little 
ones  in  the  outermost  rows  lifting  wide-open  eyes  and  mouths 
towards  the  upper  tier  of  jars,  like  small  birds  at  meal- time. 

The  elder  inhabitants  pished  and  pshawed  a  little  at  the 
folly  of  the  new  shopkeeper  in  venturing  on  such  an  outlay  in 
goods  that  would  not  keep ;  to  be  sure,  Christmas  was  coming, 
but  what  housewife  in  Grimworth  would  not  think  shame  to 
furnish  forth  her  table  with  articles  that  were  not  home- 
cooked  ?  No,  no.  Mr.  Edward  Freely,  as  he  called  himself, 
was  deceived,  if  he  thought  Grimworth  money  was  to  flow 
into  his  pockets  on  such  terms. 

Edward  Freely  was  the  name  that  shone  in  gilt  letters  on  a 
mazarine  ground  over  the  doorplace  of  the  new  shop  —  a  gen¬ 
erous-sounding  name,  that  might  have  belonged  to  the  open- 
hearted,  improvident  hero  of  an  old  comedy,  who  would  have 
delighted  in  raining  sugared  almonds,  like  a  new  manna-gift, 


492 


BROTHER  JACOB. 

among  that  small  generation  outside  the  windows.  But  Mr. 
Edward  Freely  was  a  man  whose  impulses  were  kept  in  due 
subordination :  he  held  that  the  desire  for  sweets  and  pastry 
must  only  be  satisfied  in  a  direct  ratio  with  the  power  of  pay¬ 
ing  for  them.  If  the  smallest  child  in  Grimworth  would  go  to 
him  with  a  halfpenny  in  its  tiny  fist,  he  would,  after  ringing 
the  halfpenny,  deliver  a  just  equivalent  in  “  rock.”  He  was 
not  a  man  to  cheat  even  the  smallest  child  —  he  often  said  so, 
observing  at  the  same  time  that  he  loved  honesty,  and  also 
that  he  was  very  tender-hearted,  though  he  did  n’t  show  his 
feelings  as  some  people  did. 

Either  in  reward  of  such  virtue,  or  according  to  some  more 
hidden  law  of  sequence,  Mr.  Freely’s  business,  in  spite  of  preju¬ 
dice,  started  under  favorable  auspices.  For  Mrs.  Chaloner,  the 
rector’s  wife,  was  among  the  earliest  customers  at  the  shop, 
thinking  it  only  right  to  encourage  a  new  parishioner  who  had 
made  a  decorous  appearance  at  church  ;  and  she  found  Mr. 
Freely  a  most  civil,  obliging  young  man,  and  intelligent  to  a 
surprising  degree  for  a  confectioner;  well-principled,  too,  for 
in  giving  her  useful  hints  about  choosing  sugars  he  had  thrown 
much  light  on  the  dishonesty  of  other  tradesmen.  Moreover, 
he  had  been  in  the  West  Indies,  and  had  seen  the  very  estate 
which  had  been  her  poor  grandfather’s  property ;  and  he  said 
the  missionaries  were  the  only  cause  of  the  negro’s  discontent 
—  an  observing  young  man,  evidently.  Mrs.  Chaloner  ordered 
wine-biscuits  and  olives,  and  gave  Mr.  Freely  to  understand 
that  she  should  find  his  shop  a  great  convenience.  So  did  the 
doctor’s  wife,  and  so  did  Mrs.  Gate,  at  the  large  carding-mill, 
who,  having  high  connections  frequently  visiting  her,  might 
be  expected  to  have  a  large  consumption  of  ratafias  and 
macaroons. 

The  less  aristocratic  matrons  of  Grimworth  seemed  likely 
at  first  to  justify  their  husbands’  confidence  that  they  would 
never  pay  a  percentage  of  profits  on  drop-cakes,  instead  of 
making  their  own,  or  get  up  a  hollow  show  of  liberal  house¬ 
keeping  by  purchasing  slices  of  collared  meat  when  a  neighbor 
came  in  for  supper.  But  it  is  my  task  to  narrate  the  gradual 
corruption  of  Grimworth  manners  from  their  primitive  sim- 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


493 


plicity  —  a  melancholy  task,  if  it  were  not  cheered  by  the  pros¬ 
pect  of  the  fine  peripateia  or  downfall  by  which  the  progress 
of  the  corruption  was  ultimately  checked. 

It  was  young  Mrs.  Steene,  the  veterinary  surgeon’s  wife, 
who  first  gave  way  to  temptation.  I  fear  she  had  been  rather 
over-educated  for  her  station  in  life,  for  she  knew  by  heart 
many  passages  in  “Lalla  Rookh,”  the  “Corsair,”  and  the 
“  Siege  of  Corinth,”  which  had  given  her  a  distaste  for  domestic 
occupations,  and  caused  her  a  withering  disappointment  at  the 
discovery  that  Mr.  Steene,  since  his  marriage,  had  lost  all  in¬ 
terest  in  the  “  bulbul,”  openly  preferred  discussing  the  nature 
of  spavin  with  a  coarse  neighbor,  and  was  angry  if  the  pud¬ 
ding  turned  out  watery  —  indeed,  was  simply  a  top-booted 
“  vet.,”  who  came  in  hungry  at  dinner-time ;  and  not  in  the 
least  like  a  nobleman  turned  Corsair  out  of  pure  scorn  for  his 
race,  or  like  a  renegade  with  a  turban  and  crescent,  unless  it 
were  in  the  irritability  of  his  temper.  And  scorn  is  such  a 
very  different  thing  in  top-boots  ! 

This  brutal  man  had  invited  a  supper-party  for  Christmas 
eve,  when  he  would  expect  to  see  mince-pies  on  the  table. 
Mrs.  Steene  had  prepared  her  mince-meat,  and  had  devoted 
much  butter,  fine  flour,  and  labor,  to  the  making  of  a  batch  of 
pies  in  the  morning;  but  they  proved  to  be  so  very  heavy 
when  they  came  out  of  the  oven,  that  she  could  only  think 
with  trembling  of  the  moment  when  her  husband  should  catch 
sight  of  them  on  the  supper-table.  He  would  storm  at  her, 
she  was  certain ;  and  before  all  the  company ;  and  then  she 
should  never  help  crying :  it  was  so  dreadful  to  think  she  had 
come  to  that,  after  the  bulbul  and  everything !  Suddenly  the 
thought  darted  through  her  mind  that  this  once  she  might  send 
for  a  dish  of  mince-pies  from  Freely’s  :  she  knew  he  had  some. 
But  what  was  to  become  of  the  eighteen  heavy  mince  pies  ? 
Oh,  it  was  of  no  use  thinking  about  that;  it  was  very  expen 
sive  —  indeed,  making  mince-pies  at  all  was  a  great  expense, 
when  they  were  not  sure  to  turn  out  well  it  would  be  much 
better  to  buy  them  ready-made.  You  paid  a  little  more  for 
them,  but  there  was  no  risk  of  waste. 

Such  was  the  sophistry  with  which  this  misguided  young 


494 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


woman  —  enough.  Mrs.  Steen e  sent  for  the  mince-pies,  and, 
I  am  grieved  to  add,  garbled  her  household  accounts  in  order 
to  conceal  the  fact  from  her  husband.  This  was  the  second 
step  in  a  downward  course,  all  owing  to  a  young  woman’s 
being  out  of  harmony  with  her  circumstances,  yearning  after 
renegades  and  bulbuls,  and  being  subject  to  claims  from  a 
veterinary  surgeon  fond  of  mince-pies.  The  third  step  was  to 
harden  herself  by  telling  the  fact  of  the  bought  mince-pies  to 
her  intimate  friend  Mrs.  Mole,  who  had  already  guessed  it, 
and  who  subsequently  encouraged  herself  in  buying  a  mould 
of  jelly,  instead  of  exerting  her  own  skill,  by  the  reflection 
that  “  other  people  ”  did  the  same  sort  of  thing.  The  infection 
spread ;  soon  there  was  a  party  or  clique  in  Grim  worth  on  the 
side  of  “  buying  at  Freely’s ;  ”  and  many  husbands,  kept  for 
some  time  in  the  dark  on  this  point,  innocently  swallowed  at 
two  mouthfuls  a  tart  on  which  they  were  paying  a  profit  of  a 
hundred  per  cent,  and  as  innocently  encouraged  a  fatal  dis¬ 
ingenuousness  in  the  partners  of  their  bosoms  by  praising  the 
pastry.  Others,  more  keen-sighted,  winked  at  the  too  frequent 
presentation  on  washing-days,  and  at  impromptu  suppers,  of 
superior  spiced-beef,  which  flattered  their  palates  more  than 
the  cold  remnants  they  had  formerly  been  contented  with. 
Every  housewife  who  had  once  “■  bought  at  Freely’s  ”  felt  a 
secret  joy  when  she  detected  a  similar  perversion  in  her  neigh¬ 
bor’s  practice,  and  soon  only  two  or  three  old-fashioned  mis¬ 
tresses  of  families  held  out  in  the  protest  against  the  growing 
demoralization,  saying  to  their  neighbors  who  came  to  sup 
with  them,  “  I  can’t  offer  you  Freely’s  beef,  or  Freely’s  cheese¬ 
cakes  ;  everything  in  our  house  is  home-made ;  I ’m  afraid 
you  ’ll  hardly  have  any  appetite  for  our  plain  pastry.”  The 
doctor,  whose  cook  was  not  satisfactory,  the  curate,  who  kept 
no  cook,  and  the  mining  agent,  who  was  a  great  bon  vivant, 
even  began  to  rely  on  Freely  for  the  greater  part  of  their 
dinner,  when  they  wished  to  give  an  entertainment  of  some 
brilliancy.  In  short,  the  business  of  manufacturing  the  more 
fanciful  viands  was  fast  passing  out  of  the  hands  of  maids 
and  matrons  in  private  families,  and  was  becoming  the  work 
of  a  special  commercial  organ. 


BKOTHEK  JACOB. 


495 


I  an?  not  ignorant  that  this  sort  of  thing  is  called  the  inevi¬ 
table  course  of  civilization,  division  of  labor,  and  so  forth,  and 
that  the  maids  and  matrons  may  be  said  to  have  had  their 
hands  set  free  from  cookery  to  add  to  the  wealth  of  society 
in  some  other  way.  Only  it  happened  at  Grim  worth,  which, 
to  be  sure,  was  a  low  place,  that  the  maids  and  matrons  could 
do  nothing  with  their  hands  at  all  better  than  cooking ;  not 
even  those  who  had  always  made  heavy  cakes  and  leathery 
pastry.  And  so  it  came  to  pass,  that  the  progress  of  civiliza¬ 
tion  at  Grimworth  was  not  otherwise  apparent  than  in  the 
impoverishment  of  men,  the  gossiping  idleness  of  women,  and 
the  heightening  prosperity  of  Mr.  Edward  Freely. 

The  Yellow  Coat  School  was  a  double  source  of  profit  to  the 
calculating  confectioner;  for  he  opened  an  eating-room  for 
the  superior  workmen  employed  on  the  new  school,  and  he 
accommodated  the  pupils  at  the  old  school  by  giving  great 
attention  to  the  fancy-sugar  department.  When  I  think  of 
the  sweet-tasted  swans  and  other  ingenious  white  shapes 
crunched  by  the  small  teeth  of  that  rising  generation,  I  am 
glad  to  remember  that  a  certain  amount  of  calcareous  food 
has  been  held  good  for  young  creatures  whose  bones  are  not 
quite  formed ;  for  I  have  observed  these  delicacies  to  have  an 
inorganic  flavor  which  would  have  recommended  them  greatly 
to  that  young  lady  of  the  “  Spectator’s  ”  acquaintance  who 
habitually  made  her  dessert  on  the  stems  of  tobacco-pipes. 

As  for  the  confectioner  himself,  he  made  his  way  gradually 
into  Grimworth  homes,  as  his  commodities  did,  in  spite  of 
some  initial  repugnance.  Somehow  or  other,  his  reception  as 
a  guest  seemed  a  thing  that  required  justifying,  like  the  pur¬ 
chasing  of  his  pastry.  In  the  first  place,  he  was  a  stranger, 
and  therefore  open  to  suspicion ;  secondly,  the  confectionery 
business  was  so  entirely  new  at  Grimworth,  that  its  place  in 
the  scale  of  rank  had  not  been  distinctly  ascertained.  There 
was  no  doubt  about  drapers  and  grocers,  when  they  came  of 
good  old  Grimworth  families,  like  Mr.  Luff  and  Mr.  Pretty- 
man  :  they  visited  with  the  Palfreys,  who  farmed  their  own 
land,  played  many  a  game  at  whist  with  the  doctor,  and  conde¬ 
scended  a  little  towards  the  timber-merchant,  who  had  lately 


496 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


taken  to  the  coal-trade  also,  and  had  got  new  furniture ;  but 
whether  a  confectioner  should  be  admitted  to  this  higher  level 
of  respectability,  or  should  be  understood  to  find  his  associates 
among  butchers  and  bakers,  was  a  new  question  on  which  tra¬ 
dition  threw  no  light.  His  being  a  bachelor  was  in  his  favor, 
and  would  perhaps  have  been  enough  to  turn  the  scale,  even 
if  Mr.  Edward  Freely ’s  other  personal  pretensions  had  been 
of  an  entirely  insignificant  cast.  But  so  far  from  this,  it ‘very 
soon  appeared  that  he  was  a  remarkable  young  man,  who  had 
been  in  the  West  Indies,  and  had  seen  many  wonders  by  sea 
and  land,  so  that  he  could  charm  the  ears  of  Grimworth 
Desdemonas  with  stories  of  strange  fishes,  especially  sharks, 
which  he  had  stabbed  in  the  nick  of  time  by  bravely  plunging 
overboard  just  as  the  monster  was  turning  on  his  side  to  de¬ 
vour  the  cook’s  mate ;  of  terrible  fevers  which  he  had  under¬ 
gone  in  a  land  where  the  wind  blows  from  all  quarters  at  once ; 
of  rounds  of  toast  cut  straight  from  the  bread-fruit  trees ;  of 
toes  bitten  off  by  land-crabs ;  of  large  honors  that  had  been 
offered  to  him  as  a  man  who  knew  what  was  what,  and  was 
therefore  particularly  needed  in  a  tropical  climate ;  and  of  a 
Creole  heiress  who  had  wept  bitterly  at  his  departure.  Such 
conversational  talents  as  these,  we  know,  will  overcome  dis¬ 
advantages  of  complexion ;  and  young  Towers,  whose  cheeks 
were  of  the  finest  pink,  set  off  by  a  fringe  of  dark  whisker, 
was  quite  eclipsed  by  the  presence  of  the  sallow  Mr.  Freely. 
So  exceptional  a  confectioner  elevated  his  business,  and  might 
well  begin  to  make  disengaged  hearts  flutter  a  little. 

Fathers  and  mothers  were  naturally  more  slow  and  cautious 
in  their  recognition  of  the  new-comer’s  merits. 

“  He ’s  an  amusing  fellow,”  said  Mr.  Prettyman,  the  highly 
respectable  grocer.  (Mrs.  Prettyman  was  a  Miss  Fothergill, 
and  her  sister  had  married  a  London  mercer.)  “He’s  an 
amusing  fellow ;  and  I ’ve  no  objection  to  his  making  one  at 
the  Oyster  Club ;  but  he ’s  a  bit  too  fond  of  riding  the  high 
horse.  He ’s  uncommonly  knowing,  I  ’ll  allow  ;  but  how  came 
he  to  go  to  the  Indies  ?  I  should  like  that  answered.  It ’s 
unnatural  in  a  confectioner.  I’m  not  fond  of  people  that  have 
been  beyond  seas,  if  they  can’t  give  a  good  account  how  they 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


49? 


aappened  to  go.  When  folks  go  so  far  off,  it ’s  because  they  ’ve 
got  little  credit  nearer  home  —  that ’s  my  opinion.  However, 
he ’s  got  some  good  rum ;  but  I  don’t  want  to  be  hand  and 
glove  with  him,  for  all  that.” 

It  was  this  kind  of  dim  suspicion  which  beclouded  the  view 
of  Mr.  Freely ’s  qualities  in  the  maturer  minds  of  Grim  worth 
through  the  early  months  of  his  residence  there.  But  when 
the  confectioner  ceased  to  be  a  novelty,  the  suspicions  also 
ceased  to  be  novel,  and  people  got  tired  of  hinting  at  them, 
especially  as  they  seemed  to  be  refuted  by  his  advancing  pros¬ 
perity  and  importance.  Mr.  Freely  was  becoming  a  person  of 
influence  in  the  parish ;  he  was  found  useful  as  an  overseer 
of  the  poor,  having  great  firmness  in  enduring  other  people’s 
pain,  which  firmness,  he  said,  was  due  to  his  great  benevo¬ 
lence  ;  he  always  did  what  was  good  for  people  in  the  end. 
Mr.  Chaloner  had  even  selected  him  as  clergyman’s  church¬ 
warden,  for  he  was  a  very  handy  man,  and  much  more  of  Mr. 
Chaloner’s  opinion  in  everything  about  church  business  than 
the  older  parishioners.  Mr.  Freely  was  a  very  regular  church¬ 
man,  but  at  the  Oyster  Club  he  was  sometimes  a  little  free  in 
his  conversation,  more  than  hinting  at  a  life  of  Sultanic  self- 
indulgence  which  he  had  passed  in  the  West  Indies,  shaking 
his  head  now  and  then  and  smiling  rather  bitterly,  as  men  are 
wont  to  do  when  they  intimate  that  they  have  become  a  little 
too  wise  to  be  instructed  about  a  world  which  has  long  been 
flat  and  stale  to  them. 

For  some  time  he  was  quite  general  in  his  attentions  to  the 
fair  sex,  combining  the  gallantries  of  a  lady’s  man  with  a 
severity  of  criticism  on  the  person  and  manners  of  absent 
belles,  which  tended  rather  to  stimulate  in  the  feminine  breast 
the  desire  to  conquer  the  approval  of  so  fastidious  a  judge. 
Nothing  short  of  the  very  best  in  the  department  of  female 
charms  and  virtues  could  suffice  to  kindle  the  ardor  of  Mr. 
Edward  Freely,  who  had  become  familiar  with  the  most  luxu¬ 
riant  and  dazzling  beauty  in  the  West  Indies.  It  may  seem 
incredible  that  a  confectioner  should  have  ideas  and  conversa¬ 
tion  so  much  resembling  those  to  be  met  with  in  a  higher  walk 
of  life,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  had  not  merel}T 

£2 


VOL.  IX. 


498 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


travelled,  lie  had  also  Dow-legs  and  a  sallow,  small-featured 
visage,  so  that  nature  herself  had  stamped  him  for  a  fastidious 
connoisseur  of  the  fair  sex. 

As  last,  however,  it  seemed  clear  that  Cupid  had  found  a 
sharper  arrow  than  usual,  and  that  Mr.  Freely’s  heart  was 
pierced.  It  was  the  general  talk  among  the  young  people  at 
Grimworth.  But  was  it  really  love  ?  and  not  rather  ambi¬ 
tion  ?  Miss  Fullilove,  the  timber-merchant’s  daughter,  was 
quite  sure  that  if  she  were  Miss  Benny  Palfrey,  she  would  be 
cautious ;  it  was  not  a  good  sign  when  men  looked  so  much 
above  themselves  for  a  wife.  For  it  was  no  less  a  person  than 
Miss  Penelope  Palfrey,  second  daughter  of  the  Mr.  Palfrey  who 
farmed  his  own  land,  that  had  attracted  Mr.  Freely’s  peculiar 
regard,  and  conquered  his  fastidiousness  ;  and  no  wonder  ;  for 
the  Ideal,  as  exhibited  in  the  finest  waxwork,  was  perhaps 
never  so  closely  approached  by  the  Beal  as  in  the  person  of 
the  pretty  Penelope.  Her  yellowish  flaxen  hair  did  not  curl 
naturally,  I  admit,  but  its  bright  crisp  ringlets  were  such 
smooth,  perfect  miniature  tubes,  that  you  would  have  longed 
to  pass  your  little  finger  through  them,  and  feel  their  soft 
elasticity.  She  wore  them  in  a  crop,  for  in  those  days,  when 
society  was  in  a  healthier  state,  young  ladies  wore  crops  long 
after  they  were  twenty,  and  Penelope  was  not  yet  nineteen. 
Like  the  waxen  ideal,  she  had  round  blue  eyes,  and  round 
nostrils  in  her  little  nose,  and  teeth  such  as  the  ideal  would  be 
seen  to  have,  if  it  ever  showed  them.  Altogether,  she  was  a 
small,  round  thing,  as  neat  as  a  pink  and  white  double  daisy, 
and  as  guileless  ;  for  I  hope  it  does  not  argue  guile  in  a  pretty 
damsel  of  nineteen,  to  think  that  she  should  like  to  have  a 
beau  and  be  “  engaged,”  when  her  elder  sister  had  already 
been  in  that  position  a  year  and  a  half.  To  be  sure,  there  was 
young  Towers  always  coming  to  the  house ;  but  Penny  felt 
convinced  he  only  came  to  see  her  brother,  for  he  never  had 
anything  to  say  to  her,  and  never  offered  her  his  arm,  and  was 
as  awkward  and  silent  as  possible. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  Mr.  Freely  had  early  been  smitten  by 
Penny’s  charms,  as  brought  under  his  observation  at  church, 
but  he  had  to  make  his  way  in  society  a  little  before  he  could 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


400 


come  into  nearer  contact  with  them ;  and  even  after  he  was 
well  received  in  Grimworth  families,  it  was  a  long  while  before 
he  could  converse  with  Penny  otherwise  than  in  an  incidental 
meeting  at  Mr.  Luff’s.  It  was  not  so  easy  to  get  invited  to 
Long  Meadows,  the  residence  of  the  Palfreys  ;  for  though  Mr. 
Palfrey  had  been  losing  money  of  late  years,  not  being  able 
quite  to  recover  his  feet  after  the  terrible  murrain  which 
forced  him  to  borrow,  his  family  were  far  from  considering 
themselves  on  the  same  level  even  as  the  old-established 
tradespeople  with  whom  they  visited.  The  greatest  people, 
even  kings  and  queens,  must  visit  with  somebody,  and  the 
equals  of  the  great  are  scarce.  They  were  especially  scarce  at 
Grimworth,  which,  as  I  have  before  observed,  was  a  low  par¬ 
ish,  mentioned  with  the  most  scornful  brevity  in  gazetteers. 
Even  the  great  people  there  were  far  behind  those  of  their 
own  standing  in  other  parts  of  this  realm.  Mr.  Palfrey’s 
farmyard  doors  had  the  paint  all  worn  off  them,  and  the  front 
garden  walks  had  long  been  merged  in  a  general  weediness. 
Still,  his  father  had  been  called  Squire  Palfrey,  and  had  been 
respected  by  the  last  Grimworth  generation  as  a  man  who 
could  afford  to  drink  too  much  in  his  own  house. 

Pretty  Penny  was  not  blind  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Preely 
admired  her,  and  she  felt  sure  that  it  was  he  who  had  sent 
her  a  beautiful  valentine  ;  but  her  sister  seemed  to  think  so 
lightly  of  him  (all  young  ladies  think  lightly  of  the  gentlemen 
to  whom  they  are  not  engaged),  that  Penny  never  dared  men¬ 
tion  him,  and  trembled  and  blushed  whenever  they  met  him, 
thinking  of  the  valentine,  which  was  very  strong  in  its  expres¬ 
sions,  and  which  she  felt  guilty  of  knowing  by  heart.  A  man 
who  had  been  to  the  Indies,  and  knew  the  sea  so  well,  seemed 
to  her  a  sort  of  public  character,  almost  like  Robinson  Crusoe 
or  Captain  Cook  ;  and  Penny  had  always  wished  her  husband 
to  be  a  remarkable  personage,  likely  to  be  put  in  Mangnall’s 
Questions,  with  which  register  of  the  immortals  she  had  become 
acquainted  during  her  one  year  at  a  boarding  school.  Only 
it  seemed  strange  that  a  remarkable  man  should  be  a  con¬ 
fectioner  and  pastry-cook,  and  this  anomaly  quite  disturbed 
Penny’s  dreams.  Her  brothers,  she  knew,  laughed  at  men 


500 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


who  could  n’t  sit  on  horseback  well,  and  called  them  tailors , 
but  her  brothers  were  very  rough,  and  were  quite  without  that 
power  of  anecdote  which  made  Mr.  Freely  such  a  delightful 
companion.  He  was  a  very  good  man,  she  thought,  for  she 
had  heard  him  say  at  Mr.  Luff’s,  one  day,  that  he  always 
wished  to  do  his  duty  in  whatever  state  of  life  he  might  be 
placed  ;  and  he  knew  a  great  deal  of  poetry,  for  one  day  he 
had  repeated  a  verse  of  a  song.  She  wondered  if  he  had  made 
the  words  of  the  valentine  !  —  it  ended  in  this  way  :  — 

“  Without  thee,  it  is  pain  to  live, 

But  with  thee,  it  were  sweet  to  die.” 

Poor  Mr.  Freely !  her  father  would  very  likely  object  — 
she  felt  sure  he  would,  for  he  always  called  Mr.  Freely  “  that 
sugar-plum  fellow.”  Oh,  it  was  very  cruel,  when  true  love 
was  crossed  in  that  way,  and  all  because  Mr.  Freely  was  a 
confectioner  :  well,  Penny  would  be  true  to  him,  for  all  that, 
and  since  his  being  a  confectioner  gave  her  an  opportunity  of 
showing  her  faithfulness,  she  was  glad  of  it.  Edward  Freely 
was  a  pretty  name,  much  better  than  John  Towers.  Young 
Towers  had  offered  her  a  rose  out  of  his  button-hole  the  other 
day,  blushing  very  much  ;  but  she  refused  it,  and  thought  with 
delight  how  much  Mr.  Freely  would  be  comforted  if  he  knew 
her  firmness  of  mind. 

Poor  little  Penny  !  the  days  were  so  very  long  among  the 
daisies  on  a  grazing  farm,  and  thought  is  so  active  —  how  was 
it  possible  that  the  inward  drama  should  not  get  the  start  of 
the  outward  ?  I  have  known  young  ladies,  much  better  edu¬ 
cated,  and  with  an  outward  world  diversified  by  instructive 
lectures,  to  say  nothing  of  literature  and  highly  developed 
fancy-work,  who  have  spun  a  cocoon  of  visionary  joys  and 
sorrows  for  themselves,  just  as  Penny  did.  Her  elder  sister 
Letitia,  who  had  a  prouder  style  of  beauty,  and  a  more  worldly 
ambition,  was  engaged  to  a  wool-factor,  who  came  all  the  way 
from  Cattelton  to  see  her  ;  and  everybody  knows  that  a  wool 
factor  takes  a  very  high  rank,  sometimes  driving  a  double¬ 
bodied  gig.  Letty’s  notions  got  higher  every  day,  and  Penny 
never  dared  to  speak  of  her  cherished  griefs  to  her  lofty  sister 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


501 


—  never  dared  to  propose  that  they  should  call  at  Mr.  Freely’s 
to  buy  liquorice,  though  she  had  prepared  for  such  an  incident 
by  mentioning  a  slight  sore  throat.  So  she  had  to  pass  the 
shop  on  the  other  side  of  the  market-place,  and  reflect,  with  a 
suppressed  sigh,  that  behind  those  pink  and  white  jars  some¬ 
body  was  thinking  of  her  tenderly,  unconscious  of  the  small 
space  that  divided  her  from  him. 

And  it  was  quite  true  that,  when  business  permitted,  Mr. 
Freely  thought  a  great  deal  of  Penny.  He  thought  her  pretti¬ 
ness  comparable  to  the  loveliest  things  in  confectionery  ;  he 
judged  her  to  be  of  submissive  temper  —  likely  to  wait  upon 
him  as  well  as  if  she  had  been  a  n egress,  and  to  be  silently 
terrified  when  his  liver  made  him  irritable  ;  and  he  consid¬ 
ered  the  Palfrey  family  quite  the  best  in  the  parish  possess¬ 
ing  marriageable  daughters.  On  the  whole,  he  thought  her 
worthy  to  become  Mrs.  Edward  Freely,  and  all  the  more  so, 
because  it  would  probably  require  some  ingenuity  to  win  her. 
Mr.  Palfrey  was  capable  of  horse-whipping  a  too  rash  pre¬ 
tender  to  his  daughter’s  hand ;  and,  moreover,  he  had  three 
tall  sons :  it  was  clear  that  a  suitor  would  be  at  a  disadvan¬ 
tage  with  such  a  family,  unless  travel  and  natural  acumen  had 
given  him  a  countervailing  power  of  contrivance.  And  the 
first  idea  that  occurred  to  him  in  the  matter  was,  that  Mr. 
Palfrey  v ould  object  less  if  he  knew  that  the  Freelys  were  a 
much  higher  family  than  his  own.  It  had  been  foolish  modesty 
in  him  hitherto  to  conceal  the  fact  that  a  branch  of  the  Freelys 
held  a  manor  in  Yorkshire,  and  to  shut  up  the  portrait  of 
his  great-uncle  the  admiral,  instead  of  hanging  it  up  where  a 
family  portrait  should  be  hung  —  over  the  mantel-piece  in  the 
parlor.  Admiral  Freely,  Iv.C.B.,  once  placed  in  this  conspicu¬ 
ous  position,  was  seen  to  have  had  one  arm  only,  and  one  eye, 

—  in  these  points  resembling  the  heroic  Nelson, — while  a 
certain  pallid  insignificance  of  feature  confirmed  the  relation¬ 
ship  between  himself  and  his  grand-nephew. 

Next,  Mr.  Freely  was  seized  with  an  irrepressible  ambition 
to  possess  Mrs.  Palfrey’s  receipt  for  brawn,  hers  being  pro¬ 
nounced  on  all  hands  to  be  superior  to  his  own  as  he  in¬ 
formed  her  in  a  very  flattering  letter  carried  by  his  errand-boy. 


502 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


Now  Mrs.  Palfrey,  like  other  geniuses,  wrought  by  instinct 
rather  than  by  rule,  and  possessed  no  receipts,  —  indeed, 
despised  all  people  who  used  them,  observing  that  people  who 
pickled  by  book,  must  pickle  by  weights  and  measures,  and 
such  nonsense ;  as  for  herself,  her  weights  and  measures  were 
the  tip  of  her  finger  and  the  tip  of  her  tongue,  and  if  you 
went  nearer,  why,  of  course,  for  dry  goods  like  flour  and  spice, 
you  went  by  handfuls  and  pinches,  and  for  wet,  there  was  a 
middle-sized  jug  —  quite  the  best  thing  whether  for  much  or 
little,  because  you  might  know  how  much  a  teacupful  was  if 
you  ’d  got  any  use  of  your  senses,  and  you  might  be  sure  it 
would  take  five  middle-sized  jugs  to  make  a  gallon.  Knowl¬ 
edge  of  this  kind  is  like  Titian’s  coloring,  difficult  to  commu¬ 
nicate  ;  and  as  Mrs.  Palfrey,  once  remarkably  handsome,  had 
now  become  rather  stout  and  asthmatical,  and  scarcely  ever 
left  home,  her  oral  teaching  could  hardly  be  given  anywhere 
except  at  Long  Meadows.  Even  a  matron  is  not  insusceptible 
to  flattery,  and  the  prospect  of  a  visitor  whose  great  object 
would  be  to  listen  to  her  conversation,  was  not  without  its 
charms  to  Mrs.  Palfrey.  Since  there  was  no  receipt  to  be 
sent  in  reply  to  Mr.  Freely ’s  humble  request,  she  called  on 
her  more  docile  daughter,  Penny,  to  write  a  note,  telling  him 
that  her  mother  would  be  glad  to  see  him  and  talk  with  him 
on  brawn,  any  day  that  he  could  call  at  Long  Meadows. 
Penny  obeyed  with  a  trembling  hand,  thinking  how  wonder¬ 
fully  things  came  about  in  this  world. 

In  this  way,  Mr.  Freely  got  himself  introduced  into  the 
home  of  the  Palfreys,  and  notwithstanding  a  tendency  in  the 
male  part  of  the  family  to  jeer  at  him  a  little  as  “  peaky  ”  and 
bow-legged,  he  presently  established  his  position  as  an  ac¬ 
cepted  and  frequent  guest.  Young  Towers  looked  at  him  with 
increasing  disgust  when  they  met  at  the  house  on  a  Sunday, 
and  secretly  longed  to  try  his  ferret  upon  him,  as  a  piece  of 
vermin  which  that  valuable  animal  would  be  likely  to  tackle 
with  unhesitating  vigor.  But  —  so  blind  sometimes  are  par¬ 
ents —  neither  Mr.  nor  Mrs.  Palfrey  suspected  that  Penny 
would  have  anything  to  say  to  a  tradesman  of  questionable 
rank  whose  youthful  bloom  was  much  withered.  Young 


BROTHER  JACOB 


6v3 

Towers,  they  thought,  had  an  eye  to  her,  and  that  was  likely 
enough  to  be  a  match  some  day  ;  but  Penny  was  a  child  at 
present.  And  all  the  while  Penny  was  imagining  the  circum¬ 
stances  under  which  Mr.  Freely  would  make  her  an  offer : 
perhaps  down  by  the  row  of  damson-trees,  when  they  were 
in  the  garden  before  tea ;  perhaps  by  letter  —  in  which  case, 
how  would  the  letter  begin  ?  “  Dearest  Penelope  ?  ”  or  “  My 

dear  Miss  Penelope  ?  ”  or  straight  off,  without  dear  anything, 
as  seemed  the  most  natural  when  people  were  embarrassed  ? 
But,  however  he  might  make  the  offer,  she  would  not  accept 
it  without  her  father’s  consent :  she  would  always  be  true  to 
Mr.  Freely,  but  she  would  not  disobey  her  father.  For  Penny 
was  a  good  girl,  though  some  of  her  female  friends  were  after¬ 
wards  of  opinion  that  it  spoke  ill  for  her  not  to  have  felt  an 
instinctive  repugnance  to  Mr.  Freely. 

But  he  was  cautious,  and  wished  to  be  quite  sure  of  the 
ground  he  trod  on.  His  views  in  marriage  were  not  entirely 
sentimental,  but  were  as  duly  mingled  with  considerations  of 
what  would  be  advantageous  to  a  man  in  his  position,  as  if  he 
had  had  a  very  large  amount  of  money  spent  on  his  education. 
He  was  not  a  man  to  fall  in  love  in  the  wrong  place ;  and  so, 
he  applied  himself  quite  as  much  to  conciliate  the  favor  of  the 
parents,  as  to  secure  the  attachment  of  Penny.  Mrs.  Palfrey 
had  not  been  inaccessible  to  flattery,  and  her  husband,  being 
also  of  mortal  mould,  would  not,  it  might  be  hoped,  be  proof 
against  rum  —  that  very  fine  Jamaica  rum  of  which  Mr.  Freely 
expected  always  to  have  a  supply  sent  him  from  Jamaica.  It 
was  not  easy  to  get  Mr.  Palfrey  into  the  parlor  behind  the 
shop,  where  a  mild  back-street  light  fell  on  the  features  of  the 
heroic  admiral ;  but  by  getting  hold  of  him  rather  late  one 
evening  as  he  was  about  to  return  home  from  Grimworth,  the 
aspiring  lover  succeeded  in  persuading  him  to  sup  on  some 
collared  beef  which,  after  Mrs.  Palfrey’s  brawn,  he  would  find 
the  very  best  of  cold  eating. 

From  that  hour  Mr.  Freely  felt  sure  of  success:  being  in 
privacy  with  an  estimable  man  old  enough  to  be  his  father, 
and  being  rather  lonely  in  the  world,  it  was  natural  he  should 
unbosom  himself  a  little  on  subjects  which  he  could  not  speak 


504 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


of  in  a  mixed  circle  —  especially  concerning  his  expectations 
from  his  uncle  in  Jamaica,  who  had  no  children,  and  loved 
his  nephew  Edward  better  than  any  one  else  in  the  world, 
though  he  had  been  so  hurt  at  his  leaving  Jamaica,  that  he  had 
threatened  to  cut  him  off  with  a  shilling.  However,  he  had 
since  written  to  state  his  full  forgiveness,  and  though  he  was 
an  eccentric  old  gentleman  and  could  not  bear  to  give  away 
money  during  his  life,  Mr.  Edward  Freely  could  show  Mr. 
Palfrey  the  letter  which  declared,  plainly  enough,  who  would 
be  the  affectionate  uncle’s  heir.  Mr.  Palfrey  actually  saw  the 
letter,  and  could  not  help  admiring  the  spirit  of  the  nephew 
who  declared  that  such  brilliant  hopes  as  these  made  no  differ¬ 
ence  to  his  conduct ;  he  should  work  at  his  humble  business 
and  make  his  modest  fortune  at  it  all  the  same.  If  the  Ja¬ 
maica  estate  was  to  come  to  him  —  well  and  good.  It  was 
nothing  very  surprising  for  one  of  the  Freely  family  to  have 
an  estate  left  him,  considering  the  lands  that  family  had  pos¬ 
sessed  in  time  gone  by,  —  nay,  still  possessed  in  the  North¬ 
umberland  branch.  Would  not  Mr.  Palfrey  take  another  glass 
of  rum  ?  and  also  look  at  the  last  year’s  balance  of  the  ac¬ 
counts  ?  Mr.  Freely  was  a  man  who  cared  to  possess  personal 
virtues,  and  did  not  pique  himself  on  his  family,  though  some 
men  would. 

We  know  how  easily  the  great  Leviathan  may  be  led,  when 
once  there  is  a  hook  in  his  nose  or  a  bridle  in  his  jaws.  Mr. 
Palfrey  was  a  large  man,  but,  like  Leviathan’s,  his  bulk  went 
against  him  when  once  he  had  taken  a  turning.  He  was  not 
a  mercurial  man,  who  easily  changed  his  point  of  view. 
Enough.  Before  two  months  were  over,  he  had  given  his 
consent  to  Mr.  Freely’s  marriage  with  his  daughter  Penny, 
and  having  hit  on  a  formula  by  which  he  could  justify  it, 
fenced  off  all  doubts  and  objections,  his  own  included.  The 
formula  was  this :  “I’m  not  a  man  to  put  my  head  up  an 
entry  before  I  know  where  it  leads.” 

Little  Penny  was  very  proud  and  fluttering,  but  hardly  so 
happy  as  she  expected  to  be  in  an  engagement.  She  wondered 
if  young  Towers  cared  much  about  it,  for  he  had  not  been 
to  the  house  lately,  and  her  sister  and  brothers  were  rather 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


505 


inclined  to  sneer  than  to  sympathize.  Grimworth  rang  with  the 
news.  All  men  extolled  Mr.  Freely’s  good  fortune  ;  while  the 
women,  with  the  tender  solicitude  characteristic  of  the  sex, 
wished  the  marriage  might  turn  out  well. 

While  affairs  were  at  this  triumphant  juncture,  Mr.  Freely 
one  morning  observed  that  a  stone-carver  who  had  been  break¬ 
fasting  in  the  eating-room  had  left  a  newspaper  behind.  It 

was  the  “  X - shire  Gazette,”  and  X - shire  being  a  county 

not  unknown  to  Mr.  Freely,  he  felt  some  curiosity  to  glance 
over  it,  and  especially  over  the  advertisements.  A  slight  flush 
came  over  his  face  as  he  read.  It  was  produced  by  thv 
following  announcement:  “If  David  Faux,  son  of  Jona 
than  Faux,  late  of  Gilsbrook,  will  apply  at  the  office  of  Mr. 
Strutt,  attorney,  of  Rodham,  he  will  hear  of  something  to  his 
advantage.” 

“  Father ’s  dead  !  ”  exclaimed  Mr.  Freely,  involuntarily 
“  Can  he  have  left  me  a  legacy  ?  ” 


♦ 


CHAPTER  III. 

Perhaps  it  was  a  result  quite  different  from  your  expecta¬ 
tions,  that  Mr.  David  Faux  should  have  returned  from  the 
West  Indies  only  a  few  years  after  his  arrival  there,  and  have 
set  up  in  his  old  business,  like  any  plain  man  who  had  never 
travelled.  But  these  cases  do  occur  in  life.  Since,  as  we 
know,  men  change  their  skies  and  see  new  constellations  with¬ 
out  changing  their  souls,  it  will  follow  sometimes  that  they 
don’t  change  their  business,  under  those  novel  circumstances. 

Certainly,  this  result  was  contrary  to  David’s  own  expecta¬ 
tions.  He  had  looked  forward,  you  are  aware,  to  a  brilliant 
career  among  “  the  blacks;  but,  either  because  they  had 
already  seen  too  many  white  men,  or  for  some  other  reason, 
they  did  not  at  once  recognize  him  as  a  superior  order  of 
human  being  j  besides,  there  were  no  princesses  among  them. 


506 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


Nobody  in  Jamaica  was  anxious  to  maintain  David  for  the 
mere  pleasure  of  his  society ;  and  those  hidden  merits  of  a  man 
which  are  so  well  known  to  himself  were  as  little  recognized 
there  as  they  notoriously  are  in  the  effete  society  of  the  Old 
World.  So  that  in  the  dark  hints  that  David  threw  out  at 
the  Oyster  Club  about  that  life  of  Sultanic  self-indulgence 
spent  by  him  in  the  luxurious  Indies,  I  really  think  he  was 
doing  himself  a  wrong ;  I  believe  he  worked  for  his  bread, 
and,  in  fact,  took  to  cooking  again,  as,  after  all,  the  only 
department  in  which  he  could  offer  skilled  labor.  He  had 
formed  several  ingenious  plans  by  which  he  meant  to  circum¬ 
vent  people  of  large  fortune  and  small  faculty ;  but  then  he 
never  met  with  exactly  the  right  people  under  exactly  the 
right  circumstances.  David’s  devices  for  getting  rich  without 
work  had  apparently  no  direct  relation  with  the  world  outside 
him,  as  his  confectionery  receipts  had.  It  is  possible  to  pass  a 
great  many  bad  halfpennies  and  bad  half-crowns,  but  I  believe 
there  has  no  instance  been  known  of  passing  a  halfpenny  or  a 
half-crown  as  a  sovereign.  A  sharper  can  drive  a  brisk  trade 
in  this  world :  it  is  undeniable  that  there  may  be  a  fine  career 
for  him,  if  he  will  dare  consequences ;  but  David  was  too  timid 
to  be  a  sharper,  or  venture  in  any  way  among  the  man-traps 
of  the  law.  He  dared  rob  nobody  but  his  mother.  And  so  he 
had  to  fall  back  on  the  genuine  value  there  was  in  him  —  to 
be  content  to  pass  as  a  good  halfpenny,  or,  to  speak  more 
accurately,  as  a  good  confectioner.  For  in  spite  of  some  ad¬ 
ditional  reading  and  observation,  there  was  nothing  else  he 
could  make  so  much  money  by ;  nay,  he  found  in  himself  even 
a  capability  of  extending  his  skill  in  this  direction,  and  em¬ 
bracing  all  forms  of  cookery ;  while,  in  other  branches  of  human 
labor,  he  began  to  see  that  it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  shine. 
Fate  was  too  strong  for  him  ;  he  had  thought  to  master  her 
inclination  and  had  fled  over  the  seas  to  that  end ;  but  she 
caught  him,  tied  an  apron  round  him,  and  snatching  him  from 
all  other  devices,  made  him  devise  cakes  and  patties  in  a 
kitchen  at  Kingstown.  He  was  getting  submissive  to  her, 
since  she  paid  him  with  tolerable  gains ;  but  fevers  and  prickly 
heat,  and  other  evils  incidental  to  cooks  in  ardent  climates. 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


507 


made  him  long  for  his  native  land ;  so  he  took  ship  once  more, 
carrying  his  six  years’  savings,  and  seeing  distinctly,  this  time, 
what  were  Fate’s  intentions  as  to  his  career.  If  you  question 
me  closely  as  to  whether  all  the  money  with  which  he  set  up 
at  Grimworth  consisted  of  pure  and  simple  earnings,  I  am 
obliged  to  confess  that  he  got  a  sum  or  two  for  charitably 
abstaining  from  mentioning  some  other  people’s  misdemeanors. 
Altogether,  since  no  prospects  were  attached  to  his  family 
name,  and  since  a  new  christening  seemed  a  suitable  com¬ 
mencement  of  a  new  life,  Mr.  David  Faux  thought  it  as  well 
to  call  himself  Mr.  Edward  Freely. 

But  lo  !  now,  in  opposition  to  all  calculable  probability, 
some  benefit  appeared  to  be  attached  to  the  name  of  David 
Faux.  Should  he  neglect  it,  as  beneath  the  attention  of  a 
prosperous  tradesman  ?  It  might  bring  him  into  contact  with 
his  family  again,  and  he  felt  no  yearnings  in  that  direction : 
moreover,  he  had  small  belief  that  the  “  something  to  his  ad¬ 
vantage  ”  could  be  anything  considerable.  On  the  other  hand, 
even  a  small  gain  is  pleasant,  and  the  promise  of  it  in  this 
instance  was  so  surprising,  that  David  felt  his  curiosity  awak¬ 
ened.  The  scale  dipped  at  last  on  the  side  of  writing  to  the 
lawyer,  and,  to  be  brief,  the  correspondence  ended  in  an  ap¬ 
pointment  for  a  meeting  between  David  and  his  eldest  brother 
at  Mr.  Strutt’s,  the  vague  “something”  having  been  defined  as 
a  legacy  from  his  father  of  eighty-two  pounds  three  shillings. 

David,  you  know,  had  expected  to  be  disinherited ;  and  so 
he  would  have  been,  if  he  had  not,  like  some  other  indifferent 
sons,  come  of  excellent  parents,  whose  conscience  made  them 
scrupulous  where  much  more  highly  instructed  people  often 
feel  themselves  warranted  in  following  the  bent  of  their  indig¬ 
nation.  Good  Mrs.  Faux  could  never  forget  that  she  had 
brought  this  ill-conditioned  son  into  the  world  when  he  was 
in  that  entirely  helpless  state  which  excluded  the  smallest 
choice  on  his  part ;  and,  somehow  or  other,  she  felt  that  his 
going  wrong  would  be  his  father’s  and  mother’s  fault,  if  they 
failed  in  one  tittle  of  their  parental  duty.  Her  notion  of 
parental  duty  was  not  of  a  high  and  subtle  kind,  but  it  included 
giving  him  his  due  share  of  the  family  property ;  for  when  a 


508 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


man  had  got  a  little  honest  money  of  his  own,  was  he  so  likely 
to  steal  ?  To  cut  the  delinquent  son  off  with  a  shilling,  was 
like  delivering  him  over  to  his  evil  propensities.  No  ;  let  the 
sum  of  twenty  guineas  which  he  had  stolen  be  deducted  from 
his  share,  and  then  let  the  sum  of  three  guineas  be  put  back 
from  it,  seeing  that  his  mother  had  always  considered  three  of 
the  twenty  guineas  as  his ;  and,  though  he  had  run  away,  and 
was,  perhaps,  gone  across  the  sea,  let  the  money  be  left  to  him 
all  the  same,  and  be  kept  in  reserve  for  his  possible  return. 
Mr.  Faux  agreed  to  his  wife’s  views,  and  made  a  codicil  to 
his  will  accordingly,  in  time  to  die  with  a  clear  conscience. 
But  for  some  time  his  family  thought  it  likely  that  David 
would  never  reappear ;  and  the  eldest  son,  who  had  the  charge 
of  Jacob  on  his  hands,  often  thought  it  a  little  hard  that  David 
might  perhaps  be  dead,  and  yet,  for  want  of  certitude  on  that 
point,  his  legacy  could  not  fall  to  his  legal  heir.  But  in  this 
state  of  things  the  opposite  certitude  —  namely,  that  David 
was  still  alive  and  in  England  —  seemed  to  be  brought  by  the 
testimony  of  a  neighbor,  who,  having  been  on  a  journey  to 
Cattelton,  was  pretty  sure  he  had  seen  David  in  a  gig,  with 
a  stout  man  driving  by  his  side.  He  could  “swear  it  was 
David,”  though  he  could  “give  no  account  why,  for  he  had 
no  marks  on  him  ;  but  no  more  had  a  white  dog,  and  that 
did  n’t  hinder  folks  from  knowing  a  white  dog.”  It  was  this 
incident  which  had  led  to  the  advertisement. 

The  legacy  was  paid,  of  course,  after  a  few  preliminary  dis¬ 
closures  as  to  Mr.  David’s  actual  position.  He  begged  to  send 
his  love  to  his  mother,  and  to  say  that  he  hoped  to  pay  her  a 
dutiful  visit  by-and-by ;  but,  at  present,  his  business  and  near 
prospect  of  marriage  made  it  difficult  for  him  to  leave  home. 
His  brother  replied  with  much  frankness. 

“  My  mother  may  do  as  she  likes  about  having  you  to  see 
her,  but,  for  my  part,  I  don’t  want  to  catch  sight  of  you  on  the 
premises  again.  When  folks  have  taken  a  new  name,  they’d 
better  keep  to  their  new  ’quinetance.” 

David  pocketed  the  insult  along  with  the  eighty-two  pounds 
three,  and  travelled  home  again  in  some  triumph  at  the  ease 
of  a  transaction  which  had  enriched  him  to  this  extent.  He 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


50  y 

had  no  intention  of  offending  his  brother  by  further  claims  on 
his  fraternal  recognition,  and  relapsed  with  full  contentment 
into  the  character  of  Mr.  Edward  Freely,  the  orphan,  scion  of  a 
great  but  reduced  family,  with  an  eccentric  uncle  in  the  West 
Indies.  (I  have  already  hinted  that  he  had  some  acquaintance 
with  imaginative  literature  ;  and  being  of  a  practical  turn, 
he  had,  you  perceive,  applied  even  this  form  of  knowledge  to 
practical  purposes.) 

It  was  little  more  than  a  week  after  the  return  from  his 
fruitful  journey,  that  the  day  of  his  marriage  with  Penny 
having  been  fixed,  it  was  agreed  that  Mrs.  Palfrey  should 
overcome  her  reluctance  to  move  from  home,  and  that  she  and 
her  husband  should  bring  their  two  daughters  to  inspect  little 
Penny’s  future  abode  and  decide  on  the  new  arrangements  to 
be  made  for  the  reception  of  the  bride.  Mr.  Freely  meant  her 
to  have  a  house  so  pretty  and  comfortable  that  she  need  not 
envy  even  a  wool-factor’s  wife.  Of  course,  the  upper  room  over 
the  shop  was  to  be  the  best  sitting-room ;  but  also  the  parlor 
behind  the  shop  was  to  be  made  a  suitable  bower  for  the 
lovely  Penny,  who  would  naturally  wish  to  be  near  her  hus¬ 
band,  though  Mr.  Freely  declared  his  resolution  never  to  allow 
his  wife  to  wait  in  the  shop.  The  decisions  about  the  parlor 
furniture  were  left  till  last,  because  the  party  was  to  take  tea 
there ;  and,  about  five  o’clock,  they  were  all  seated  there  with 
the  best  muffins  and  buttered  buns  before  them,  little  Penny 
blushing  and  smiling,  with  her  “crop”  in  the  best  order, 
and  a  blue  frock  showing  her  little  white  shoulders,  while 
her  opinion  was  being  always  asked  and  never  given.  She 
secretly  wished  to  have  a  particular  sort  of  chimney  orna¬ 
ments,  but  she  could  not  have  brought  herself  to  mention  it. 
Seated  by  the  side  of  her  yellow  and  rather  withered  lover, 
who,  though  he  had  not  reached  his  thirtieth  year,  had  already 
crow’s-feet  about  his  eyes,  she  was  quite  tremulous  at  the  great¬ 
ness  of  her  lot  in  being  married  to  a  man  who  had  travelled  so 
much  — and  before  her  sister  Letty  !  The  handsome  Letitia 
looked  rather  proud  and  contemptuous,  thought  her  future 
brother-in-law  an  odious  person,  and  was  vexed  with  her 
father  and  mother  for  letting  Penny  marry  him.  Dear  little 


510 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


Penny  !  She  certainly  did  look  like  a  fresh  white-heart  cherry 
going  to  be  bitten  off  the  stem  by  that  lipless  mouth.  Would 
no  deliverer  come  to  make  a  slip  between  that  cherry  and  that 
mouth  without  a  lip  ? 

“Quite  a  family  likeness  between  the  admiral  and  you,  Mr. 
Freely,”  observed  Mrs.  Palfrey,  who  was  looking  at  the  family 
portrait  for  the  first  time.  “  It ’s  wonderful !  and  only  a  grand¬ 
uncle.  Do  you  feature  the  rest  of  your  family,  as  you  know 
of  ?” 

“I  can’t  say,”  said  Mr.  Freely,  with  a  sigh.  “My  family 
have  mostly  thought  themselves  too  high  to  take  any  notice 
of  me.” 

At  this  moment  an  extraordinary  disturbance  was  heard  in 
the  shop,  as  of  a  heavy  animal  stamping  about  and  making 
angry  noises,  and  then  of  a  glass  vessel  falling  in  shivers, 
while  the  voice  of  the  apprentice  was  heard  calling  “  Master  ” 
in  great  alarm. 

Mr.  Freely  rose  in  anxious  astonishment,  and  hastened  into 
the  shop,  followed  by  the  four  Palfreys,  who  made  a  group  at 
the  parlor-door,  transfixed  with  wonder  at  seeing  a  large  man 
in  a  smock-frock,  with  a  pitchfork  in  his  hand,  rush  up  to 
Mr.  Freely  and  hug  him,  crying  out,  —  “  Zavy,  Zavy,  b’other 
Zavy !  ” 

It  was  Jacob,  and  for  some  moments  David  lost  all  presence 
of  mind.  He  felt  arrested  for  having  stolen  his  mother’s 
guineas.  He  turned  cold,  and  trembled  in  his  brother’s  grasp. 

“  Why,  how ’s  this  ?  ”  said  Mr.  Palfrey,  advancing  from  the 
door.  “  Who  is  he  ?  ” 

Jacob  supplied  the  answer  by  saying  over  and  over  again,  — 

“  I  ’se  Zacob,  b’other  Zacob.  Come  ’o  zee  Zavy  ”  —  till  hun¬ 
ger  prompted  him  to  relax  his  grasp,  and  to  seize  a  large 
raised  pie,  which  he  lifted  to  his  mouth. 

By  this  time  David’s  power  of  device  had  begun  to  return, 
but  it  was  a  very  hard  task  for  his  prudence  to  master  his 
rage  and  hatred  towards  poor  Jacob. 

“  I  don’t  know  who  he  is  ;  he  must  be  drunk,”  he  said,  in 
a  low  tone  to  Mr.  Palfrey.  “  But  he ’s  dangerous  with  that 
pitchfork.  He  ’ll  never  let  it  go.”  Then  checking  himself 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


511 


on  the  point  of  betraying  too  great  an  intimacy  with  Jacob’s 
habits,  he  added,  u  You  watch  him,  while  I  run  for  the  con 
stable.”  And  he  hurried  out  of  the  shop. 

“Why,  where  do  you  come  from,  my  man?”  said  Mr. 
Palfrey,  speaking  to  Jacob  in  a  conciliatory  tone.  Jacob  was 
eating  his  pie  by  large  mouthfuls,  and  looking  round  at  the 
other  good  things  in  the  shop,  while  he  embraced  his  pitchfork 
with  his  left  arm  and  laid  his  left  hand  on  some  Bath  buns. 
He  was  in  the  rare  position  of  a  person  who  recovers  a  long 
absent  friend  and  finds  him  richer  than  ever  in  the  character¬ 
istics  that  won  his  heart. 

“  I ’s  Zacob  —  b’otlier  Zacob  —  ’t  home.  I  love  Zavy  — 
b’other  Zavy,”  he  said,  as  soon  as  Mr.  Palfrey  had  drawn  his 
attention.  “  Zavy  come  back  from  z’  Indies  —  got  mother’s 
zinnies.  Where ’s  Zavy  ?  ”  he  added,  looking  round  and  then 
turning  to  the  others  with  a  questioning  air,  puzzled  by 
David’s  disappearance. 

“  It  "s  very  odd,”  observed  Mr.  Palfrey  to  his  wife  and 
daughters.  “  He  seems  to  say  Freely ’s  his  brother  come  back 
from  th’  Indies.” 

“  What  a  pleasant  relation  for  us  !  ”  said  Letitia,  sarcasti¬ 
cally.  “  I  think  he ’s  a  good  deal  like  Mr.  Freely.  He ’s  got 
just  the  same  sort  of  nose,  and  his  eyes  are  the  same  color.” 

Poor  Penny  was  ready  to  cry. 

But  now  Mr.  Freely  re-entered  the  shop  without  the  consta¬ 
ble.  During  his  walk  of  a  few  yards  he  had  had  time  and 
calmness  enough  to  widen  his  view  of  consequences,  and  k- 
saw  that  to  get  Jacob  taken  to  the  workhouse  or  to  the  lock¬ 
up  house  as  an  offensive  stranger,  might  have  awkward  effects 
if  his  family  took  the  trouble  of  inquiring  after  him.  He 
must  resign  himself  to  more  patient  measures. 

“  On  second  thoughts,”  he  said,  beckoning  to  Mr.  Palfrey 
and  whispering  to  him  while  Jacob’s  back  was  turned,  “  he ’s 
a  poor  half-witted  fellow.  Perhaps  his  friends  will  come  after 
him.  I  don’t  mind  giving  him  something  to  eat,  and  letting 
him  lie  down  for  the  night.  He ’s  got  it  into  his  head  that  he 
knows  me  —  they  do  get  these  fancies,  idiots  do.  He  b  per¬ 
haps  go  away  again  in  an  hour  or  two,  and  make  no  more  ado. 


512 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


I ’m  a  kind-hearted  man  myself —  I  should  n’t  like  to  have  the 
poor  fellow  ill-used.” 

“Why,  he  ’ll  eat  a  sovereign’s  worth  in  no  time,”  said  Mr. 
Palfrey,  thinking  Mr.  Freely  a  little  too  magnificent  in  his 
generosity. 

“Eh,  Zavy,  come  back  ?  ”  exclaimed  Jacob,  giving  his  dear 
brother  another  hug,  which  crushed  Mr.  Freely’s  features 
inconveniently  against  the  stale  of  the  pitchfork. 

“  Ay,  ay,”  said  Mr.  Freely,  smiling,  with  every  capability  of 
murder  in  his  mind,  except  the  courage  to  commit  it.  He 
wished  the  Bath  buns  might  by  chance  have  arsenic  in  them. 

“  Mother’s  zinnies  ?”  said  Jacob,  pointing  to  a  glass  jar  of 
yellow  lozenges  that  stood  in  the  window.  “  Zive  ’em  me.” 

David  dared  not  do  otherwise  than  reach  down  the  glass  jar 
and  give  Jacob  a  handful.  He  received  them  in  his  smock- 
frock,  which  he  held  out  for  more. 

“  They  ’ll  keep  him  quiet  a  bit,  at  any  rate,”  thought  David, 
and  emptied  the  jar.  Jacob  grinned  and  mowed  with  delight. 

“You’re  very  good  to  this  stranger,  Mr.  Freely,”  said  Leti- 
tia  ;  and  then  spitefully,  as  David  joined  the  party  at  the 
parlor-door,  “  I  think  you  could  hardly  treat  him  better,  if  he 
was  really  your  brother.” 

“  I  ’ve  always  thought  it  a  duty  to  be  good  to  idiots,”  said 
Mr.  Freely,  striving  after  the  most  moral  view  of  the  sub¬ 
ject.  “We  might  have  been  idiots  ourselves  —  everybody 
might  have  been  born  idiots,  instead  of  having  their  right 
senses.” 

“I  don’t  know  where  there ’d  ha’  been  victual  for  us  all 
then,”  observed  Mrs.  Palfrey,  regarding  the  matter  in  a  house¬ 
wifely  light. 

“But  let  us  sit  down  again  and  finish  our  tea,”  said  Mr. 
Freely.  “  Let  us  leave  the  poor  creature  to  himself.” 

They  walked  into  the  parlor  again ;  but  Jacob,  not  appar¬ 
ently  appreciating  the  kindness  of  leaving  him  to  himself, 
immediately  followed  his  brother,  and  seated  himself,  pitch 
fork  grounded,  at  the  table. 

“Well,”  said  Miss  Letitia,  rising,  “I  don’t  know  whether 
you  mean  to  stay,  mother ;  but  I  shall  go  home.” 


BROTHER  JACOB.  513 

“Oh,  me  too,”  said  Penny,  frightened  to  death  at  Jacob, 
who  had  begun  to  nod  and  grin  at  her. 

“Well,  I  think  we  hod  better  be  going,  Mr.  Palfrey,”  said 
the  mother,  rising  more  slowly. 

Mr.  Freely,  whose  complexion  had  become  decidedly  yel¬ 
lower  during  the  last  half-hour,  did  not  resist  this  proposi¬ 
tion.  Hf3  hoped  they  should  meet  again  “under  happier 
circumstances.” 

“  It ’s  my  belief  the  man  is  his  brother,”  said  Letitia,  when 
they  were  all  on  their  way  home. 

“Letty,  it’s  very  ill-natured  of  you,”  said  Penny,  beginning 
to  cry. 

“Nonsense!”  said  Mr.  Palfrey.  “  Freely ’s  got  no  brother 
• — he ’s  said  so  many  and  many  a  time  ;  he ’s  an  orphan ;  he 's 
got  nothing  but  uncles  —  leastwise,  one.  What’s  it  matter 
what  an  idiot  says  ?  What  call  had  Freely  to  tell  lies  ?  ” 

Letitia  tossed  her  head  and  was  silent. 

Mr.  Freely,  left  alone  with  his  affectionate  brother  Jacob, 
brooded  over  the  possibility  of  luring  him  out  of  the  town 
early  the  next  morning,  and  getting  him  conveyed  to  Gilsbrook 
without  further  betrayals.  But  the  thing  was  difficult.  He 
saw  clearly  that  if  he  took  Jacob  away  himself,  his  absence, 
conjoined  with  the  disappearance  of  the  stranger,  would  either 
cause  the  conviction  that  he  was  really  a  relative,  or  would 
oblige  him  to  the  dangerous  course  of  inventing  a  story  to 
account  for  his  disappearance,  and  his  own  absence  at  the 
same  time.  David  groaned.  There  come  occasions  when 
falsehood  is  felt  to  be  inconvenient.  It  would,  perhaps,  have 
been  a  longer-headed  device,  if  he  had  never  told  any  of  those 
clever  fibs  about  his  uncles,  grand  and  otherwise;  for  the 
Palfreys  were  simple  people,  and  shared  the  popular  prejudice 
against  lying.  Even  if  he  could  get  Jacob  away  this  time, 
what  security  was  there  that  he  would  not  come  again,  having 
once  found  the  way  ?  O  guineas  !  0  lozenges  !  what  enviable 
people  those  were  who  had  never  robbed  their  mothers,  and 
had  never  told  fibs  !  David  spent  a  sleepless  night,  while  J acoh 
Was  snoring  close  by.  "W  as  this  the  upshot  of  travelling  to  the 
Indies,  and  acquiring  experience  ombined  with  anecdote  ? 

‘6c 


VOL  IX. 


514 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


He  rose  at  break  of  day,  as  he  had  once  before  done  when 
he  was  in  fear  of  Jacob,  and  took  all  gentle  means  to  rouse 
this  fatal  brother  from  his  deep  sleep ;  he  dared  not  be  loud, 
because  his  apprentice  was  in  the  house,  and  would  report 
everything.  But  Jacob  was  not  to  be  roused.  He  fought  out 
with  his  fist  at  the  unknown  cause  of  disturbance,  turned  over, 
and  snored  again.  He  must  be  left  to  wake  as  he  would. 
David,  with  a  cold  perspiration  on  his  brow,  confessed  to  him¬ 
self  that  Jacob  could  not  be  got  away  that  day. 

Mr.  Palfrey  came  over  to  Grimworth  before  noon,  with  a 
natural  curiosity  to  see  how  his  future  son-in-law  got  on  with 
the  stranger  to  whom  he  was  so  benevolently  inclined.  He 
found  a  crowd  round  the  shop.  All  Grimworth  by  this  time 
had  heard  how  Freely  had  been  fastened  on  by  an  idiot,  who 
called  him  “  Brother  Zavy ;  ”  and  the  younger  population 
seemed  to  find  the  singular  stranger  an  unwearying  source  of 
fascination,  while  the  householders  dropped  in  one  by  one  to 
inquire  into  the  incident. 

“  Why  don’t  you  send  him  to  the  workhouse  ?  ”  said  Mr. 
Prettyman.  “  You  ’ll  have  a  row  with  him  and  the  children 
presently,  and  he  ’ll  eat  you  up.  The  workhouse  is  the  proper 
place  for  him  ;  let  his  kin  claim  him,  if  he ’s  got  any.” 

“  Those  may  be  your  feelings,  Mr.  Prettyman,”  said  David) 
his  mind  quite  enfeebled  by  the  torture  of  his  position. 

“  What !  is  he  your  brother,  then  ?  ”  said  Mr.  Prettyman, 
looking  at  his  neighbor  Freely  rather  sharply. 

“  All  men  are  our  brothers,  and  idiots  particular  so,”  said 
Mr.  Freely,  who,  like  many  other  travelled  men,  was  not 
master  of  the  English  language. 

“Come,  come,  if  he’s  your  brother,  tell  the  truth,  man,” 
said  Mr.  Prettyman,  with  growing  suspicion.  “  Don’t  be 
ashamed  of  your  own  flesh  and  blood.” 

Mr.  Palfrey  was  present,  and  also  had  his  eye  on  Freely. 
It  is  difficult  for  a  man  to  believe  in  the  advantage  of  a  truth 
which  will  disclose  him  to  have  been  a  liar.  In  this  critical 
moment,  David  shrank  from  this  immediate  disgrace  in  the 
eyes  of  his  future  father-in-law. 

“  Mr.  Prettyman,”  he  said,  u  I  take  your  observations  as  aD 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


'51, E 

insult.  I ’ve  no  reason  to  be  otherwise  than  proud  of  my  owr 
flesh  and  blood.  If  this  poor  man  was  my  brother  more  than 
a1!  men  are,  I  should  say  so.” 

A  tall  figure  darkened  the  door,  and  David,  lifting  his  eyes 
in  that  direction,  saw  his  eldest  brother,  Jonathan,  on  the 
door-sill. 

“I  ’ll  stay  wi’  Zavy,”  shouted  Jacob,  as  he,  too,  caught  sight 
of  his  eldest  brother ;  and,  running  behind  the  counter,  he 
clutched  David  hard. 

“  What,  he  is  here  ?  ”  said  Jonathan  Faux,  coming  forward. 
“  My  mother  would  have  no  nay,  as  he ’d  been  away  so  long, 
but  I  must  see  after  him.  And  it  struck  me  he  was  very  like 
come  after  you,  because  we ’d  been  talking  of  you  o’  late,  and 
where  you  lived.” 

David  saw  there  was  no  escape ;  he  smiled  a  ghastly  smile. 

“  What !  is  this  a  relation  of  yours,  sir  ?  ”  said  Mr.  Palfrey 
to  Jonathan. 

“  Ay,  it ’s  my  inniceut  of  a  brother,  sure  enough,”  said 
honest  Jonathan.  “  A  fine  trouble  and  cost  he  is  to  us,  in 
th’  eating  and  other  things,  but  we  must  bear  what ’s  laid 
on  us.” 

“  And  your  name ’s  Freely,  is  it  ?  ”  said  Mr.  Prettyman. 

“Nay,  nay,  my  name’s  Faux,  I  know  nothing  o’  Freelys,” 
said  Jonathan,  curtly.  “Come,”  he  added,  turning  to  David, 
“  I  must  take  some  news  to  mother  about  Jacob.  Shall  I  take 
him  with  me,  or  will  you  undertake  to  send  him  back  ?  ” 

“Take  him,  if  you  can  make  him  loose  his  hold  of  me,” 
said  David,  feebly. 

“  Is  this  gentleman  here  in  the  confectionery  line  your 
brother,  then,  sir  ?  ”  said  Mr.  Prettyman,  feeling  that  it  was 
an  occasion  on  which  formal  language  must  be  used. 

“  J  don’t  want  to  own  him,”  said  Jonathan,  unable  to  resist 
a  movement  of  indignation  that  had  never  been  allowed  to 
satisfy  itself.  “  He  run  away  from  home  witn  good  reasons 
in  his  pocket  years  ago  :  he  did  n’t  want  to  be  owned  again,  I 
reckon.” 

Mr.  Palfrey  left  the  shop  ;  he  felt  his  own  pride  too  severely 
wounded  by  the  sense  that  he  had  let  himself  be  fooled,  to 


516 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


feel  curiosity  for  further  details.  The  most  pressing  business 
was  to  go  home  and  tell  his  daughter  that  Freely  was  a 
poor  sneak,  probably  a  rascal,  and  that  her  engagement  was 
broken  off. 

Mr.  Prettyman  stayed,  with  some  internal  self-gratulation 
that  he  had  never  given  in  to  Freely,  and  that  Mr.  Chaloner 
would  see  now  what  sort  of  fellow  it  was  that  he  had  put  over 
the  heads  of  older  parishioners.  He  considered  it  due  from 
him  (Mr.  Prettyman)  that,  for  the  interests  of  the  parish,  he 
should  know  all  that  was  to  be  known  about  this  “  interloper.” 
Grimworth  would  have  people  coming  from  Botany  Bay  to 
settle  in  it,  if  things  went  on  in  this  way. 

It  soon  appeared  that  Jacob  could  not  be  made  to  quit  his 
dear  brother  David  except  by  force.  He  understood,  with  a 
clearness  equal  to  that  of  the  most  intelligent  mind,  that 
Jonathan  would  take  him  back  to  skimmed  milk,  apple¬ 
dumpling,  broad-beans,  and  pork.  And  he  had  found  a  para¬ 
dise  in  his  brother’s  shop.  It  was  a  difficult  matter  to  use 
force  with  Jacob,  for  he  wore  heavy  nailed  boots  ;  and  if  his 
pitchfork  had  been  mastered,  he  would  have  resorted  without 
hesitation  to  kicks.  Nothing  .short  of  using  guile  to  bind  him 
hand  and  foot  would  have  made  all  parties  safe. 

“  Let  him  stay,”  said  David,  with  desperate  resignation, 
frightened  above  all  things  at  the  idea  of  further  distui’bances 
in  his  shop,  which  would  make  his  exposure  all  the  more  con¬ 
spicuous.  “  You  go  away  again,  and  to-morrow  I  can,  perhaps, 
get  him  to  go  to  Gilsbrook  with  me.  He  ’ll  follow  me  fast 
enough,  I  dare  say,”  he  added,  with  a  half-groan. 

“Very  well,”  said  Jonathan,  gruffly.  “I  don’t  see  why  you 
should  n’t  have  some  trouble  and  expense  with  him  as  well  as 
the  rest  of  us.  But  mind  you  bring  him  back  safe  and  soon, 
else  mother  ’ll  never  rest.” 

On  this  arrangement  being  concluded,  Mr.  Prettyman  begged 
Mr.  Jonathan  Faux  to  go  and  take  a  snack  with  him,  an  invi¬ 
tation  which  was  quite  acceptable ;  and  as  honest  Jonathan 
had  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of,  it  is  probable  that  he  was  very 
frank  in  his  communications  to  the  civil  draper,  who,  pursuing 
the  benefit  of  the  parish,  hastened  to  '"ake  all  the  informa- 


BROTHER  JACOB. 


517 


tion  he  could  gather  about  Freely  common  parochial  property. 
You  may  imagine  that  the  meeting  of  the  Club  at  the  Wool' 
pack  that  evening  was  unusually  lively.  Every  member  was 
anxious  to  prove  that  he  had  never  liked  Freely,  as  he  called 
himself.  Faux  was  his  name,  was  it  ?  Fox  would  have  been 
more  suitable.  The  majority  expressed  a  desire  to  see  him 
hooted  out  of  the  town. 

Mr.  Freely  did  not  venture  over  his  door-sill  that  day,  for 
he  knew  Jacob  would  keep  at  his  side,  and  there  was  every 
probability  that  they  would  have  a  train  of  juvenile  followers. 
He  sent  to  engage  the  Woolpack  gig  for  an  early  hour  the 
next  morning ;  but  this  order  was  not  kept  religiously  a  secret 
by  the  landlord.  Mr.  Freely  was  informed  that  he  could  not 
have  the  gig  till  seven;  and  the  Grim  worth  people  were  early 
.  isers.  Perhaps  they  were  more  alert  than  usual  on  this  par¬ 
ticular  morning;  for  when  Jacob,  with  a  bag  of  sweets  in  his 
hand,  was  induced  to  mount  the  gig  with  his  brother  David, 
the  inhabitants  of  the  market-place  were  looking  out  of  their 
doors  and  windows,  and  at  the  turning  of  the  street  there  was 
even  a  muster  of  apprentices  and  schoolboys,  who  shouted  as 
they  passed  in  what  Jacob  took  to  be  a  very  merry  and  friendly 
way,  nodding  and  grinning  in  return.  “Huzzay,  David  Faux! 
how ’s  your  uncle  ?  ”  was  their  morning’s  greeting.  Like  other 
pointed  things,  it  was  not  altogether  impromptu. 

Even  this  public  derision  was  not  so  crushing  to  David  as 
the  horrible  thought  that  though  he  might  succeed  now  in 
getting  Jacob  home  again  there  would  never  be  any  security 
against  his  coming  back,  like  a  wasp  to  the  honey-pot.  As 
long  as  David  lived  at  Grimworth,  Jacob’s  return  would  be 
hanging  over  him.  But  could  he  go  on  living  at  Grimworth 
— an  object  of  ridicule,  discarded  by  the  Palfreys,  after 
having  revelled  in  the  consciousness  that  he  was  an  envied 
and  prosperous  confectioner  ?  David  liked  to  be  envied ;  he 
minded  less  about  being  loved. 

His  doubts  on  this  point  were  soon  settled.  The  mind  of 
Grimworth  became  obstinately  set  against  him  and  his  viands, 
and  the  new  school  being  finished,  the  eating-room  was  closed. 
If  there  had  been  no  other  reason,  sympathy  with  the  Palfreys, 


518 


BROTHEli  JACOB. 


that  respectable  family  who  had  lived  in  the  parish  time  out  oi 
mind,  would  have  determined  all  well-to-do  people  to  decline 
Freely’s  goods.  Besides,  he  had  absconded  with  his  mother’s 
guineas :  who  knew  what  else  he  had  done,  in  Jamaica  or  else¬ 
where,  before  he  came  to  Grimworth,  worming  himself  into 
families  under  false  pretences  ?  Females  shuddered.  Dread¬ 
ful  suspicions  gathered  round  him :  his  green  eyes,  his  bow¬ 
legs,  had  a  criminal  aspect.  The  rector  disliked  the  sight  of 
a  man  who  had  imposed  upon  him;  and  all  boys  who  could 
not  afford  to  purchase,  hooted  “  David  Faux  ”  as  they  passed 
his  shop.  Certainly  no  man  now  would  pay  anything  for  the 
“  good-will  ”  of  Mr.  Freely’s  business,  and  he  would  be  obliged 
to  quit  it  without  a  peculium  so  desirable  towards  defraying 
the  expense  of  moving. 

In  a  few  months  the  shop  in  the  market-place  was  again  to 
let,  and  Mr.  David  Faux,  alias  Mr.  Edward  Freely,  had  gone 
—  nobody  at  Grimworth  knew  whither.  In  this  way  the  de¬ 
moralization  of  Grimworth  women  was  checked.  Young  Mrs. 
Steene  renewed  her  efforts  to  make  light  mince-pies,  and  hav¬ 
ing  at  last  made  a  batch  so  excellent  that  Mr.  Steene  looked 
at  her  with  complacency  as  he  ate  them,  and  said  they  were 
the  best  he  had  ever  eaten  in  his  life,  she  thought  less  of  bul¬ 
buls  and  renegades  ever  after.  The  secrets  of  the  finer  cookery 
were  revived  in  the  breasts  of  matronly  housewives,  and 
daughters  were  again  anxious  to  be  initiated  in  them. 

You  will  further,  I  hope,  be  glad  to  hear,  that  some  pur¬ 
chases  of  drapery  made  by  pretty  Penny,  in  preparation  for 
her  marriage  with  Mr.  Freely,  came  in  quite  as  well  for  her 
wedding  with  young  Towers  as  if  they  had  been  made  ex 
pressly  for  the  latter  occasion.  For  Penny’s  complexion  had 
not  altered,  and  blue  always  became  it  best. 

Here  ends  the  story  of  Mr.  David  Faux,  confectioner,  and 
his  brother  Jacob.  And  we  see  in  it,  I  think,  an  admirable 
instance  of  the  unexpected  forms  in  which  the  great  Nemesis 
hides  herself 


CH  INS 


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